Territorial versus individual hotel seasonality in a high seasonal destination

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent seasonality studies typically use territorial values as a proxy of the individual distribution of seasonality, for example, hotels. However, this assumption of aggregation does not necessarily hold. In this paper, we want to test this equivalence, and therefore the possible relevance of individual characteristics in explaining differentials, using hotels as a basic unit of analysis and the destination of Costa Daurada as a reference case (typical sun and beach mass destination in Spain, with very high seasonality records). Several empirical exercises are carried out first, it is tested, as a previous step, whether the territorial seasonality mean approximates well the individual; second, we make an empirical analysis of possible differentials using some well-known econometric specifications and as a useful variables like size, quality, location and domestic market shares. The main empirical results are consistent with the relevance of these differentials, in spite of the global seasonality context, and the significant role played by these characteristics, which open some room to reduce the individual seasonality records and, in turn, the territorial values.