Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pricing decisions of hotels in an effort to ascertain whether corporate affiliation and stars influence hotels' pricing decisions. The findings suggest that high-quality (ie four- and five-star) hotels tend to be affiliated with chains and signal this affiliation using a naming strategy. In addition, the industry-based star rating system explains a large part of the price variation. The impact of corporate affiliation, modelled as the size of the corporation, has a relatively smaller, but overall positive, impact on price. An investigation of different locations reveals that the intensity of corporate affiliation, and specific characteristics of the consumers' market in each location are also significant in explaining the hotels' pricing decisions.
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