Research on influence of Chinese urbanization on hotel industry development

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of urbanization on hotel industry development. We employ the proportion of urban population to represent urbanization level and construct a panel regression model using statistical data of Chinese provincial hotel industry in the 2001–2012 periods. The econometric analysis shows that urbanization has positive effects on hotel industry development and contributes 8.91 percentage points to hotel income growth rate. The provinces with higher urbanization level have more developed hotel industry. The result also reveals that fixed capital is the main driver to push the Chinese hotel industry development, while labour factor is relatively weaker. The negative effects of urbanization on hotel industry development and practical implications of the research results are discussed.