Airbnb, sun-and-beach tourism and residential rental prices. The case of the coast of Andalusia (Spain)

ABSTRACT

According to studies carried out to date, the arrival of the sharing economy in the field of tourist accommodation is giving rise to an increase in residential rental prices, also called long-term rental, in major tourist cities. In this paper, we analyse the effect on the residential rental price of Airbnb accommodation offered for sun-and-beach tourism on the coast of Andalusia (Spain). We use an econometric specification that includes average disposable income, the number of second homes, the offer of accommodation in exclusively tourist hotels and apartments, the temporary hiring of immigrant workers, and permanent immigration. The main result to emerge from the work is that sun-and-beach Airbnb listings explains 13.69% of the price of residential rental prices in the coastal area of Andalusia.

KEYWORDS:

• Rental prices
• Airbnb
• sun-and-beach tourism
• Andalusian coast

JEL CODES:

• D16
• L82
• L85
• O18

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The literature on social conflict associated with the processes of tourism gentrification has begun to use the term touristification (Colomb & Novy, 2016).

2 A description of the different types of demand in the housing market can be found in Hierro et al. (1992).

3 The few works exploring the effects on housing prices also concur in that the offer of Airbnb and house prices have a direct relationship; the greater the Airbnb offer, the higher the house prices (Barron et al., 2018; Elíasson & Ragnarsson, 2018; Garcia-López et al., 2019; Sheppard & Udell, 2016).

4 Canary Islands Teachers Trade Union (Spanish acronym – STEC-IC).

5 The Fotocasa real estate portal, Idealista’s main competitor, lists just over one million properties.

6 The Spanish Ministry of Infrastructure recently published the 2019 Special Gazette on Rental Housing, which shows market average rental prices by province (not by municipalities) calculated from the quantity of deposits made in those autonomous communities where paying such a deposit is mandatory.

7 In Spain, the sun-and-beach season starts in early July, after the academic year concludes in late June, and extends until September 15. This is due to the high temperatures that persist during September and because the school year does not commence until the second or third week of September.