The effects of moratoriums on hotel building: An anti-tourism measure, or rather protection for local incumbents?

Abstract

In July 2015 the newly elected City Council of Barcelona approved a moratorium on the building of hotels. This study empirically evaluates its effect on hotel prices, using 202,019 daily observations on hotel prices between 2011 and 2017. While the inflow of tourists continued to rise after the moratorium, our synthetic control method finds that hotel prices increased significantly above pre-intervention trends. This suggests that the actual outcome of the moratorium was the protection and promotion of the interests of local industry incumbents.