On the choice of accommodation type at the time of Covid-19. Some evidence from the Italian tourism sector

ABSTRACT

This note focuses on the impact of coronavirus on Italian tourism. Using a sample of 1056 travellers, we find a positive relationship between the security of destination and the probability to accommodate in hotels and B&B. Furthermore, regional contagion is negatively associated to the willingness to pay for accommodation services. The policy implications are twofold. Firstly, hotels/B&B claim for financial support to ensure social distancing and, thus, security that will attract tourists. Secondly, public finance could sustain the demand of tourist services in hotels and B&B which is lowering because of coronavirus.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• Italian tourism
• willingness to pay
• pandemic crisis
• accommodation type
• hotels and B&B

Acknowledgements

The authors thank two anonymous referees and Alessia Via for valuable suggestions on an earlier version of the paper. Usual disclaimer applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See, for instance, Foo et al. (2020), Karabulut et al. (2020), Li et al. (2020), Yang et al. (2020), Zhang et al. (2020).