The effects of moratoriums on hotel building: an anti-tourism measure, or rather protection for local incumbents?

In July 2015, the newly elected City Council of Barcelona approved a moratorium on the building of hotels. This study empirically evaluates its effect on hotel prices, using 202,019 daily observations on hotel prices between 2011 and 2017. While the inflow of tourists continued to rise after the mor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inApplied economics letters Vol. 29; no. 14; pp. 1319 - 1324
Main Authors Bel, Germà, Joseph, Stephan, Mazaira-Font, Ferran A.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Routledge 16.08.2022
Taylor & Francis LLC
Subjects
Commercial space
Construction companies
Councils
Economic analysis
Economic theory
Economics
Fees & charges
hotel pricing
Hotels & motels
Incumbency
Moratoriums
Prices
Rent-seeking
synthetic control
Tourism
Spain
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Summary:In July 2015, the newly elected City Council of Barcelona approved a moratorium on the building of hotels. This study empirically evaluates its effect on hotel prices, using 202,019 daily observations on hotel prices between 2011 and 2017. While the inflow of tourists continued to rise after the moratorium, our synthetic control method finds that hotel prices increased significantly above pre-intervention trends. This suggests that the actual outcome of the moratorium was the protection and promotion of the interests of local industry incumbents.
ISSN:1350-4851
1466-4291
DOI:10.1080/13504851.2021.1927958