Hotel Characteristics and Seasonality in Prices: An Analysis Using Spanish Tour Operators' Brochures

Abstract

Seasonality in the tourism sector has been a major concern for policy makers, managers and other stakeholders. Many studies have analysed seasonality from the point of view of the number of visitors. However, there appear to be no studies focusing on seasonality in prices and on how to smooth out seasonal patterns. This paper analyses how hotel characteristics affect seasonality in prices using brochure data on 1,776 hotels in 32 sun-and-beach destinations in 11 countries. The authors find that, after controlling for destinationspecific variables that may cause variations in prices through demand shifts (such as climatic conditions, exchange rates or marketing expenditures), more hotel services and higher star ratings are associated with fewer seasonal variations in hotel prices.

Effects of Vacation Rental Websites on the Concentration of Tourists—Potential Environmental Impacts. An Application to the Balearic Islands in Spain

“…Some of them are focused on breaking down the seasonal factors that constitute the time series, i.e., [1,44,45,46,47,48]. Other papers prefer to develop predictions or modeling [49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58].…”

Seasonal concentration of tourism demand: Decomposition analysis and marketing implications

“…Koenig-Lewis and Bischoff (2005) present a comprehensive review of the research on seasonality and its causes. Further exemplary reviews have outlined the main causes and consequences, debates and issues in seasonality research (Baum & Lundtorp, 2001;Boffa & Succurro, 2012;Butler & Mao, 1997;Cannas, 2012;Espinet, Fluvia, & Rigall-I-Torrent, 2012;Getz & Nilsson, 2004;Jang, 2004;Kulendran & Wong, 2005). Coshall et al (2015) categorized studies on seasonality according to whether they investigated the types and causes of seasonality, their impacts and policy implications, or the range of public and private sector interventions that have been made in attempting to mitigate seasonality.…”

“…A range of marketing strategies have been identified in the literature. Seasonal price variation and the diversification of both the visitor attractions and tourism products are common approaches (Espinet et al, 2012;Jang, 2004). Although lower prices in the low season may still yield higher profits by increasing demand, they may reduce a destination's perceived quality (Espinet et al, 2012).…”

Assessment of the Tourism’s Potential as a Sustainable Development Instrument in Terms of Annual Stability: Application to Spanish Rural Destinations in Process of Consolidation

“…The most common approach for measuring seasonality is to estimate seasonal factors in time series using deviations proportional to moving averages by means of dummy variables in multi-linear regressions, or other methods based on data series. There are several works based on this approach [17,49,52,[64][65][66][67]. Seasonality is also a key element in tourism forecasting and modeling, which can be considered as a deterministic or stochastic component in a series of analyses [68].…”