Evidence of hotels' dynamic pricing patterns on an Internet distribution channel; the case study of the Basque Country's hotels in 2013-2014

摘要

The price is the single, most efficient tool that hoteliers have to adjust the demand and the offer in the short term. Dynamic pricing is the practice of changing the price charged for a product based on time. Using hotel room price data collected from an Internet distribution channel, this paper presents the research carried out to investigate the dynamic pricing practices of the hotels in the Basque Country in 2013 and 2014. The analysis shows that these hotels favour two price-changing patterns. The first pattern refers to the practice of changing a number of prices for contiguous, future target dates on the same date. The second pattern refers to the practice of changing the price a set number of days in advance of the target date. This paper and the research presented in it are an extension of the research published in the ENTER 2015 conference proceedings. The findings reinforce the previous conclusions by arriving to the same patterns after analysing data for a much wider geographical area, the Basque Country as opposed to Bilbao, and two years instead of one, 2014 as well as 2013 as previously.