Analyzing hotel efficiency from a regional perspective: The role of environmental determinants

Abstract

With the development of the tourism industry over the last three decades, there has been growing interest in evaluating the efficiency of the hotel industry from a regional perspective. This paper joins this stream of research and assesses the performance of the Spanish hotel industry using a two-stage double bootstrap data envelopment analysis methodology. Additionally, we extend research on the impact of environmental variables on efficiency by examining the impact of four variables: length of stay, number of international tourists, destination quality, and the sun and sand tourism model. The results show a high degree of hotel inefficiency for Spanish regions and a significant effect of the environmental variables considered. These results give policymakers more accurate information for future strategic decisions, especially because that tourism constitutes a strategic sector of Spain’s national economy.