Tourists’ willingness to pay for holiday trip characteristics: A Discrete Choice Experiment

Abstract

This article studies the marginal rates of substitution and Willingness to Pay for holiday trip characteristics. Using a Discrete Choice Experiment, we examine how much individuals from four cities in Northern Spain are willing to pay for accommodation, mode of transport, travel time and length of stay. We estimate a Latent Class Model that accounts for taste heterogeneity based on sociodemographic characteristics. The welfare loss due to a tourism daily tax is also examined. Our results show that respondents place positive utility to travelling by plane, high-quality accommodation and longer stays. Specifically, they are willing to pay €170 more for plane travelling with respect to the use of car, €120 for staying at a four-star hotel relative to an apartment and €760 for a 10-day trip relative to a 3-day one. A daily tax of €1 per person would produce a larger welfare loss in coastal destinations.

Is there room for a room‐tax in the Canary Islands?

“…In the case of tourism, discrete choice models have been applied in different areas (see the review by Crouch & Louviere, 2000); for example, to model individual preferences on attributes of the demand for tourism goods or services (Boto‐García, Mariel, Pino, & Alvarez, 2020; Chen, Masiero, & Hsu, 2019; Masiero, Heo, & Pan, 2015) the choice of destinations (Huybers, 2003), the environmental and recreational value of cultural or natural heritage (Lee, Mjelde, Kim, Lee, & Choi, 2019; Lupu, Padhi, Pati, & Stoleriu, 2020; Perez Loyola, Wang, & Kang, 2019), or the effects of certain policies, such as environmental conservation policies (see for example, Bocci, Sohngen, Lupi, & Milian, 2020; Xu et al, 2020). Nevertheless, Rosselló and Sansó (2017) noted two difficulties in applying choice models to assess the effect of a tax increase on the international demand for a tourist destination: (a) the use of the distance variable as an indicator of price, makes it impossible to analyse price increases as a result of the tax, and (b) the difficulty of having a representative sample of international tourists with information about alternative destinations.…”

Willingness to pay for attributes of Templestay and implications on marginal utility of different meditation forms

“…Along this line, Masiero et al (2019) find the attribute with the largest WTP in their study is having a waterfront promenade. In another choice experiment study, Boto-García et al (2020) show tourists place positive utility on high-quality accommodations. Song et al (2021) find respondents place the heaviest weight on resort facilities for integrated resorts.…”

“…Within the tourism literature, choice experiments have been used to value cultural heritage and/or vacation attributes (Chen and Chen, 2012; Lee et al, 2019; Wright and Eppink, 2016). Boto-García et al (2020), however, note most choice experiments examining leisure recreation have focused on nature-based tourism.…”

Statistical System of Cultural Heritage Tourism Information Based on Image Feature Extraction Technology

“…It should achieve the practical unity of good unity's current and long-term interests and environmental, economic, and social benefits. Combining the tourism market and cultural heritage protection is the mark of the success of cultural heritage tourism development, which can meet the increase in people's demand for tourism products and the sustainable development of cultural heritage tourism [19].…”