[A-HW21] Interdisciplinary approach to support climate change adaptation measures in regional scale

[AHW21-10] Valuation of Sandy Beach Tourism Benefit with Respect to Hotel Room Rates by Using a Spatial Hedonic Model in Thailand

*Chatuphorn Somphong¹, Keiko Udo¹, Sompratana Ritphring², Hiroaki Shirakawa³ (1.International Research Institute of Disaster Science, Tohoku University, Japan, 2.Department of Water Resources Engineering, Kasetsart University, Thailand, 3.Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Japan)

Keywords:Coastal tourism, Hedonic pricing method, Hotel Price, Geographically weighted regression analysis, climate change adaptation

An economic assessment for a non-market resource like sandy beaches is always a challenge for Thailand’s coastal policy planners due to the lack of data availability, especially on the national scale. While beach tourism in Thailand has been representing an essential part of the Thai economy, the sandy beaches are probably exposed to the future sea-level rise. Therefore, the need for tourism benefit of the beaches should be conducted. The research attempted to measure the effect of sandy beach characteristics and hotel location with respect to the hotel room rates. A sample of 3,331 hotel rooms across Thailand’s coastal sub-districts, covering the entire sandy beaches in Thailand, was collected through a hotel-booking online database during the country peak season. The considered variables include hotel room attributes, sandy beach characteristics, hotel locations, and coastal infrastructures. Through a hedonic price model based on geographically weighted regression analysis, the relationship between the dependent variables (hotel room rate) and the independent variables (selected beach variable) was estimated to evaluate the marginal effect and its spatial variations. The tourism benefit was assumedly calculated from the marginal effect of the hotel’s beachfront locations on hotel price. The study suggested the location in front of the beach raised the average hotel room rates by 15.0-36.5%. The results emphasized the significant spatial variability of the estimated Beachfront coefficient. In addition, the effect of beach protection structures (i.e. seawall, breakwaters, groins) on the hotel price was also investigated and implied a slight drop by 1.0-3.0% of the average price. The other sandy beach variables (such as beach length, width, slope) effects on hotel price were also investigated.