Modest Fluvià

Proposal for an Integral Quality Index for Urban and Urbanized Beaches

A composite index, based on function analysis and including thirteen sub-indices, was developed to assess the overall quality of urban and urbanized beaches in the Mediterranean area. The aggregation of components and sub-indices was based on two questionnaires completed by beach users and experts. Applying the new Beach Quality Index (BQI) demonstrated that the quality of beaches could be improved. In general, the strongest aspects of the beaches assessed were those related to short-term user demand, and the weakest were those related to the consequences of human pressure on the area, in particular, erosion problems. The composite index is intended to be used together with Environmental Management Beach Systems (EMBs) as a hierarchical management scorecard and in monitoring programs. This new tool could also make planning more proactive by synthesizing the state of the most important beach processes.

Hotel Characteristics and Seasonality in Prices: An Analysis Using Spanish Tour Operators' Brochures

Seasonality in the tourism sector has been a major concern for policy makers, managers and other stakeholders. Many studies have analysed seasonality from the point of view of the number of visitors. However, there appear to be no studies focusing on seasonality in prices and on how to smooth out seasonal patterns. This paper analyses how hotel characteristics affect seasonality in prices using brochure data on 1,776 hotels in 32 sun-and-beach destinations in 11 countries. The authors find that, after controlling for destination-specific variables that may cause variations in prices through demand shifts (such as climatic conditions, exchange rates or marketing expenditures), more hotel services and higher star ratings are associated with fewer seasonal variations in hotel prices.

The impact of inbound demand on price levels in tourism municipalities: empirical evidence from Catalonia.

It is usually argued that tourism exerts negative economic impacts in host jurisdictions through the increase in prices linked to increasing demand for basic services and goods from tourists. This paper surveys 149 products in 45 tourism and non-tourism jurisdictions in Catalonia (which represent a total of 18,500 prices) in order to test empirically several hypotheses related to differences in price levels in tourism and non-tourism jurisdictions. The main results show that prices in tourism jurisdictions are not significantly higher than those in non-tourism ones. The analysis suggests that tourists are likely to pay higher prices than natives for some products.

Learning Undergraduate Microeconomics by Reading the Masters

The article presents an experience developed with upper undergraduate microeconomics students which consists of reading selected classical articles on key microeconomics topics rather than attending typical lectures. The paper has two main goals. First, to give a detailed account of the structure for an upper-intermediate microeconomics course based on students reading original research articles. The presentation emphasizes the aspects which may help instructors when implementing the approach to other courses. Second, in order to evaluate the proposed method, the paper determines whether student learning improves with such an approach. Besides, the paper’s results also allow instructors to determine what kind of article is more appropriate for upper-undergraduate students in microeconomics.