ساختار بازار و سودآوری در صنعت هتل توریستی بین المللی

This paper adopts Hsiao (1986) panel data techniques, with metropolitan-level panel data from Taiwan, to examine how the market structures of various related service markets and hotels’ locations affect hotels’ profitability. The empirical results indicate that: (1) market concentration in rooms could significantly improve international tourist hotels’ profitability, while concentration in the food and beverage markets have positive but insignificant effects, and (2) the locations of the international tourist hotels significantly affect their profitability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among market structures of various related service markets, hotels’ locations and international tourist hotels’ (ITHs’) profitability. Since the 1930s, Mason, 1939 and Mason, 1949, Bain, 1951 and Bain, 1956 and numerous scholars have developed the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) industrial organization paradigm. The SCP paradigm argues that a high seller concentration creates an environment facilitating collusive behavior among firms, and firms in highly concentrated markets should earn positive economic profits (Bain, 1951). Therefore, there exists a positive relationship between market concentration and profitability. Lots of inter-industry studies have been done since then. Most of the inter-industry studies supported the positive relationship between concentration and profitability for instance, Bain, 1951 and Bain, 1956 and Weiss (1974). Weiss (1974) particularly explored 46 studies in the 1970s and found that 42 of them support the positive relationship. After Weiss (1974), some scholars extended the inter-industry studies toward other countries. For example, Neumann, Bobel, & Haid, 1979 and Neumann, Bobel, & Haid, 1985 studied West Germany; Caves and Uekusa (1976) examined Japan. They found a positive relationship between concentration and profitability. However, Porter (1976), Connolly and Hirschey (1984) and Hirschey (1985) provided contradictory evidences with United States data. They showed a negative relationship between concentration and profitability. Intra-industry studies, especially for service sectors, have not been done until more recently. Attention has been given to service industries, including the banking industry (Bourke, 1989; Molyneux and Thornton, 1992; Goldberg and Rai, 1996; Chirwa, 2003), the insurance industry (Chidambaran et al., 1997; Bajtelsmit and Bouzouita, 1998), etc. Despite previous research on the concentration and profitability relationship in the past, the hotel industry has not received sufficient attention. A recent paper was written by Davies (1999) who investigated the UK hotel sector. With a panel of 36 hotels over the period 1989–1994, his empirical result indicated that market concentration negatively affected hotels’ profitability, which contradicts the argument of SCP paradigm. Nevertheless, two issues demand further studies. First, Davies (1999) took data on “total” sales revenues to calculate market concentration indexes. During the early history of hotels, hotels were just places to sleep. In that case, market concentration indices based on hotels’ “total” sales revenues might have been good measurements of market structures faced by hotels. However, today's hotels provide various services, including rooms, food, beverage, swimming pools, etc. That means today's hotels compete in various services markets, and hence Davies's (1999) approach might not be appropriate. Second, Davies (1999) focused primarily on tracing the effects of hotel-specific factors on their profitability. He failed to detect the effects of hotels’ locations, while location is a very important factor for a hotel's success (Lundberg et al., 1995). Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of market structures of various international tourist hotels (ITH)-related service markets and ITHs’ locations on the ITHs’ profitability. In the Taiwanese ITH industry, the ITHs mainly compete in two markets, a rooms market and a food and beverage (mainly for banquets and conferences) market. Not surprisingly, the two major operating revenues account for more than 80% of the ITHs’ total revenues. This paper measures the market structures of the two markets separately, and then examines how market structures affect ITHs’ profitability. Using Hsiao's (1986) panel data techniques, this paper also examines how the ITHs’ locations affect profitability. The original relevant data by metropolitan areas, i.e. Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung, from 1989 to 2000 was obtained from the Tourism Bureau, Ministry of Transportation and Communications. It is commonly believed that investment in, and expansion of, the hotel industries are important for developing tourism industries and stimulating economies. Because of the economic impacts, government, entrepreneurs and consumer associations play all kinds of roles to intervene in the development of hotel industries. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 provides the background information of the international tourist hotel industry in Taiwan. It then examines how market structures and ITHs’ locations affect ITHs’ profitability in section 3. Section 4 provides the concluding remarks.

Recently, Davies (1999) investigated the UK hotel sector and indicated that market concentration negatively affected hotels’ profitability and there exist hotel-specific effects. This paper adopts the panel data of the international tourist hotels in Taiwan to explore the relationship among the market structures of various ITH-related service markets, hotels’ locations, and international tourist hotels’ (ITHs’) profitability. This paper provides quite different results. These indicate that the market concentration in the rooms markets could significantly improve international tourist hotels’ profitability, while the market concentration in food and beverage markets have positive but insignificant effects on international tourist hotels’ profitability. Second, the locations of ITHs significantly affect their profitability. The business environments for international tourist hotels are quite different among the three major metropolitan areas, while the Taipei metropolitan area provides the best business environment among them. Because of the potential economic impacts, government, entrepreneurs and consumers have paid attention to the development of hotel industries. This paper suggests that market structures and locations are important factors in determining success and this demands more attention in planning private and/or public investment in and policies towards the industry. For example, new entrants should have strategies to cope with possible collusive behavior among incumbent hotels. The incumbents could have survival mechanisms to deal with the market competition without breaking the anti-trust law. The government could work on changing the business environments for the industry, including transportation network, personnel availability, business opportunities, commercial offices, recreation attractions, etc. As the SCP paradigm argued, high levels of market concentration could facilitate collusion among firms and then result in higher profitability. The results of this paper imply that the relationship appears to be particularly strong in the ITH industries, which have high entry barriers. However, Damsetz (1973) provided an alternative explanation, which argued that greater efficiency of large firms could cause higher profitability in the more concentrated industry. The reasoning behind the relationship between market concentration and profitability demands further studies.