Are all online hotel prices created dynamic? An empirical assessment

Melis, Giuseppe;Piga, Claudio

2017-01-01

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Abstract

Understanding how tourist firms set their online prices is important given their growing reliance on Online Travel Agencies (OTA). The article investigates whether the narrative of a pervasive presence of dynamic pricing provides a realistic description of hotels’ online pricing behavior and thus challenges the view that dynamic pricing should be considered the prevailing norm for the industry. The evidence suggests a heterogeneous attitude across hotels, with uniform pricing being more widespread in most hotels of our sample, namely, the 3-star or less, while dynamic pricing is more likely applied in higher quality hotels.