Abstract:This paper evaluates the impact of innovative activity in the hotel industry on the willingness to pay by consumers. To this end we estimate a hedonic price function where innovation is identified indirectly through certain attributes. The contrast is performed on a representative sample of Cuban hotels considering a large number of attributes of hotels and rooms. To solve the usual problems of collinearity an original procedure is developed. The results highlight the importance of the attributes linked to innovation and internationalization on the price of the rooms of Cuban hotels.Keywords: Innovation, Hospitality industry, Prices, hedonic pricing method. ¿ES RELEVANTE LA INNOVACIÓN PARA LOS CLIENTES EN LA INDUSTRIA HOTELERA? UN ENFOQUE HEDÓNICO PARA LOS HOTELES CUBANOS Resumen:Este trabajo evalúa el impacto de la actividad innovadora en la industria hotelera sobre la disposición a pagar por los consumidores. Con este objetivo se estima una función hedónica de precios donde las innovaciones se identifican indirectamente a través de ciertos atributos de los hoteles. El contraste se realiza sobre una muestra representativa de hoteles cubanos considerando un número importante de atributos de los hoteles y de las habitaciones. Para solventar el problema habitual de colinealidad en este contexto, se desarrolla un procedimiento original. Los resultados ponen de manifiesto la importancia de los atributos ligados a la innovación e internacionalización sobre el precio de las habitaciones de los hoteles cubanos.

This article presents a new tool for the analysis of the international competitiveness of tourist destinations based on the evolution of tourist inflows. For this purpose, an adaptation of the conditional β-convergence to the tourist sector is proposed. Beyond the analysis of the growth rate of tourist flows, which is not comparable among countries, some of the specificities of this sector are considered in the competitive analysis, such as the different sizes of the markets and the maturity of the destinations, the business cycle, and so on. UNWTO data for international tourist arrivals and tourism receipts for up to 214 destinations and the period 1995 to 2016 are used to analyze the evolution of the competitiveness of major international tourist regions and some of the world’s leading tourist destinations. The results show the potential of the proposed tool for analyzing tourism competitiveness by offering a diagnosis in the short, medium and long terms.