Industrial legacy and hotel pricing: An application of spatial hedonic pricing analysis in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France

Abstract

An old industrial region’s legacy can be a serious impediment to the development of tourism and other activities by generating negative externalities and disamenities. The aim of this article is to examine whether the cost of this industrial past as valued by tourists is reflected in hotel rates of the Nord-Pas de Calais region, a forerunner of the Industrial Revolution in France. An analysis based on the hedonic price method is undertaken using geolocalized data, to decompose hotel prices into the implicit prices of a set of attributes, both private and public, including the adverse public attributes inherited from the industrial past (brownfield sites, slag heaps, industrial seaports). By comparing the importance of each factor, our analysis provides useful information for public policy and hotel management strategies. In particular, our estimations reveal a significant negative effect of these adverse inherited public attributes on hotel rates for the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, but in the same order of magnitude as the effect of a tourist attraction, suggesting the potential power of public policy and local regeneration initiatives. Furthermore, our results show that hotel managers can obtain valuable information relative to the choice of a location for initial development, their investment strategy, and their communication strategy.

The moderating effect of seasonality in the hotel industry. Does market concentration favour tacit collusion?

“…Distance can refer to how far away the city center is, a particular spot or area that tourists love to visit, the distance to the beach, or the distance to ski facilities, depending on the destination type. A higher distance to the favourite customers' location is associated with lower prices, reinforcing the idea that location matters as a crucial decision variable for investors and hotel managers (Espinet et al, 2003;Sánchez-Ollero et al, 2014;Soler et al, 2019;Lévi et al,2022). The importance of distance has been highlighted for different regions and countries, including the United States, China, Spain, Portugal and France, to mention a few examples.…”

“…The importance of distance has been highlighted for different regions and countries, including the United States, China, Spain, Portugal and France, to mention a few examples. In terms of the academic literature, one additional consensus is that higher quality of service and better facilities, measured by the number of stars, increase the price (Espinet et al, 2003;Soler et al, 2019;Lévi et al,2022). Online reviews are an…”

“…The better the average rate past customers give, the higher hotel prices (Schuckert et al, 2015;Wen et al,2021). Hedonic prices have been used to test other hypotheses, such if more investment in being environmentally sustainable is associated with higher prices (Sánchez-Ollero et al, 2014), if factors influencing the price differ if we consider weekdays or weekend rates ( Chen and Rothschild, 2010) or if industrial legacy plays a negative role, meaning that areas that were heavily industrialized in the past, with old factories and decaying facilities with no use, imply a negative externality for the hotels located in the area, in terms of a lower willingness to pay from tourists ( Lévi et al,2022). The instrument of hedonic prices has also been used with alternative hotel accommodation options, such as Airbnb apartments.…”

Contribution of streetscape features to the hedonic pricing model using Geographically Weighted Regression: Evidence from Amsterdam

“…The distance to natural elements such as lakes (Schläpfer et al, 2015), beaches (Cirer Costa, 2013), forests, and rivers (Latinopoulos, 2018) have been considered in determining hotel pricing in tourist destinations. In a work by Lévi et al (2020) a rather unexpected conclusion was made in that the post-industrial landscapes such as old factories, harbors, train yards, tenements and barracks, mines, and sites at the edges of the transportation network, have become less perceived as polluted and abandoned zones, but believed to be able to bring economic benefits to local hotels.…”

Willingness to pay, familiarity and political attitudes: The case of integrating people with intellectual disabilities

“…There are two methods to this approach. The first is called the Hedonic Price Method (HPM) , which estimates consumer preferences by identifying the characteristics of the product and estimating the effect of each property unit on the price of the product (see, e.g., Hill et al, 2021; Lévi et al, 2020; Nepal et al, 2020). The second method is the Travel Cost Method (TCM) , which derives the value of any resource from the cost invested in obtaining and retaining it (see, e.g., Czajkowski et al, 2019; Desta & Bersisa, 2019; Gusdini et al, 2020).…”