Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Tourism Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman
h i g h l i g h t s
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: This paper investigates the determinants of FDI activity in the hospitality industry using a gravity model.
Received 21 February 2014 It draws on a new and unique database of 2420 FDI projects carried out by 50 parent countries in 104
Received in revised form host countries from 2005 to 2011. Results show that the number of hotel FDI projects is signicantly and
16 February 2016
positively related to the market size and the existence of a common language while increases in the level
Accepted 19 February 2016
Available online 5 March 2016
of business regulations, tax rates or minimum wages have the opposite effect. Geographical distance and
socioeconomic factors are not relevant. Comparing the number of predicted FDI projects with those
actually carried out, we nd that the United Kingdom, India, and Mexico are particularly successful in
Keywords:
Foreign direct investment
attracting hotel FDI projects, whereas Russia, Germany, and the United States host much fewer.
Hotel sector 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
International hotel chains
Business regulations
Factor costs
Gravity model
Count data model
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2016.02.012
0261-5177/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
226 M. Falk / Tourism Management 55 (2016) 225e237
investment decision. 2006). FDI can take many forms including construction of new
The aim of this study is to provide new insights into the de- hotels, expansion of existing ones, mergers and acquisition (M&As)
terminants of FDI ows in the hotel industry using a unique data- or joint ventures. In the hotel industry the major kind of foreign
base. The empirical model is based on a FDI gravity model, which is entry is non-equity participation e franchising, management con-
estimated by panel count data estimators. The basic FDI gravity tracts, and leasing, for example (Altinay, 2005; Contractor & Kundu,
model is augmented by a large number of policy and non-policy 1998; Dunning & McQueen, 1982; Endo, 2006; Quer, Claver, &
factors (e.g. market size, distance, cultural factors, international Andreu, 2007). Contractor and Kundu (1998) nd that 66 percent
tourist arrivals relative to population, corporate taxes and mini- of hotel chain expansions abroad take the route of franchising and
mum hourly wages and business regulation indicators), factor en- management contracts. Many studies investigate the rm and
dowments (e.g. skills and broadband penetration), and other country specic determinants of entry modes (e.g. Martorell, Mulet,
socioeconomic factors (land surface area, prevalence of HIV/AIDS, & Otero, 2013). Typically, non-equity contractual ways of entry are
etc.). commonly regarded as less risky modes of entry. Because of this
Despite growing interest in the determinants of FDI activity in franchising and management contracts are often the preferred way
the hotel industry, few studies have investigated the country- of entry in risky markets or countries (Chen & Dimou, 2005). Pre-
specic location factors in play (see, for example, Dunning & vious literature shows that way of foreign market entry varies
Kundu, 1995; Johnson & Vanetti, 2005; Assaf, Josiassen, & across host country characteristics. Dunning and McQueen (1981)
Agbola, 2015). There are two strands of the literature. One asks nd franchising to be more common in high-income countries.
hotel managers/owners or hotel investors about their opinion on Contractor and Kundu (1998) show that non-equity modes such as
the main location factors (Dunning & Kundu, 1995; Johnson & franchising and management contracts are preferred in high-
Vanetti, 2005; Newell & Seabrook, 2006), and the other in- income countries, whereas equity investment is more common in
vestigates the importance of locational factors for hotel FDI using developing countries. This stands in contrast to earlier studies
regression analysis (Assaf et al., 2015). Another strand of the where FDI is the normal entry model in developed countries,
literature on hotel location analysis has investigated the factors whereas management contracts are employed in developing
within regions or metropolitan areas and/or across regions (Yang, countries (UNCTC, 1982).
Luo, & Law, 2014). In this study we focus specically on FDI through construction of
Few large cross-country studies are available that use inter- new and expansion of existing hotels. Thus, FDI through mergers
nationally comparable data on FDI in the hotel sector. Accord- and acquisitions is not considered. While cross-border M&As
ingly, Song, Dwyer, Li, and Cao (2012) claim that there is a lack of involve a transfer of ownership of equity with ambiguous effects on
comprehensive data and research in the area of foreign direct the local hotel sector, FDI in hotel construction or expansion gen-
investment in the hospitality industry. An exception is the study erates new jobs. Wang and Wong (2009) show that the impact of
by Assaf et al. (2015) who nd that a host country's transport cross-border mergers and acquisitions on growth of the host
infrastructure, growth of local tourism industry, and size and economy is not clear-cut.
growth of the host country all have a positive impact on inter-
national rooms per capita, whereas corruption and crime rate
have negative effects. The data is based on 123 destinations for 2.2. Determinants of FDI in general
the period 2007 to 2011.
This study contributes to the literature in two ways: First we The theoretical background of the empirical model is the
use a gravity model to investigate the determinants of FDI ows ownership, location, and internalization (OLI) advantages
in the hospitality industry. The advantage of gravity models is framework developed by Dunning (1988). The OLI framework
that geographical distance and source country characteristics can states that FDI activity can be explained by ownership, location,
be explicitly taken into account (Morley, Rossello , & Santana- and internalization (OLI) advantages. Ownership advantages are
Gallego, 2014). Another advantage of using source host country those particular to the investing company. They may include
pairs is the much larger sample size. Second, we focus on new superior productivity, size, innovation activities, rm specic
hotel construction and the expansion of existing hotels rather human capital and past international experience. Location ad-
than mergers and acquisitions of existing hotels. This study goes vantages consist of host country-specic factors such as market
beyond Assaf et al. (2015) by using a gravity approach to study size and growth, factor costs, FDI regulation and other business
the determinants of bilateral FDI ows in the hotel sector. The regulation. Internalization advantages refer to the modes of
gravity model is useful in investigating bilateral FDI ows be- internationalization they opt for and their possible effects, with
tween countries. FDI being only one possible alternative. This also explains the
The structure of this paper is as follows: Section 2 presents the way in which entry into foreign markets can be achieved.
theoretical background and Section 3 the empirical model. Sum- Ownership and internalization advantages provide a framework
mary statistics are presented in Section 4, and Section 5 offers a for analyzing outward FDI. Location advantage is about the
range of empirical results. Section 6 contains concluding remarks. locational choice of foreign investors and as such also frames the
determinants of inward FDI when seen from the perspective of
host countries. This study mainly focuses on country-specic
2. Theoretical background location factors. According to UNTCAD's World Investment
Prospect Survey (2009), among foreign investors in service in-
2.1. Entry modes into foreign markets dustries e besides size and growth of the host market e presence
of suppliers and business partners, access to international/
In the hospitality business there are several modes of entry into regional markets, stable and business friendly environment are
international markets. The literature distinguishes between non- also important location factors. The World Bank (2010) especially
equity contractual modes (franchising, management contracts, points to inefcient administration and inadequate institutional
licensing) and equity modes such as FDI (Altinay, 2005; Endo, settings as major deterrents for foreign capital inows.
M. Falk / Tourism Management 55 (2016) 225e237 227
2.3. Determinants of hotel FDI international investment in the tourism sector. For instance, a
high prevalence of AIDS and/or crime makes a country less
Dunning applied his theory to the international lodging industry attractive to foreign visitors (Asiedu, Jin, & Kanyama, 2011;
(Dunning & Kundu, 1995; Dunning & McQueen, 1981). Dunning and Cossens & Gin, 1995).
Kundu (1995) nd that hotel FDI depends on a bundle of host- Other studies use regional or time series data for a single
country location characteristics including market size, growth destination country. Zhang, Guillet, and Gao (2012) examine data
rate, tourism opportunities, availability of infrastructure, and po- on choice of hotel location in Chinese provinces and nd that total
litical and economic stability. Using data on FDI ows in the hotel inbound tourists, average inbound tourist spending, GDP per capita,
sector for 67 host countries, Kundu and Contractor (1999) nd that and mega-events (the Olympic Games, for example) are signi-
market size e measured as GDP and tourism revenues e has the cant factors. Using time-series data on Egypt, Steiner (2011) sug-
most inuence on choice of location. Johnson and Vanetti (2005) gests that tourism FDI is more inuenced by business regulations
suggest that home-country proximity, infrastructure and tourist and host-market growth than by violent political unrest.
attractions, market size and growth, government incentives to To summarize, the literature has identied a number of loca-
attract FDI, and a reputation as an attractive business destination tional factors for FDI in the hotel industry. However, none of the
are the main location factors for FDI in emerging markets (in this studies have used bilateral FDI ow data to investigate the de-
case, in Eastern Europe). Based on a survey of international hotel terminants of FDI ows in the hotel sector.
groups, UNCTAD (2007) has identied a number of host-country
determinants of FDI in the hotel industry. According to the sur- 3. Empirical model
vey, the most important determinants are tourism demand from
developed countries, market size, and economic growth, while FDI- The origins of our empirical model e the FDI gravity model
related regulation, FDI incentives, and geographical and cultural (Fratianni, Marchionne, & Oh, 2011; Morley et al., 2014; Zwinkels
proximity are rated as least important. Endo (2006) suggests that & Beugelsdijk, 2010) e lie in the physical theory of gravity.
the determinants of FDI in tourism are no different from those in Newton's law of universal gravitation states that the gravitational
other industries. These determinants include cultural, historical, attraction between two objects is proportional to the product of
and geographical distance; political and/or economic risks; level of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the
economic development; socioeconomic environment; industry distance between them. In the present context, this translates
privatisation and regulation of FDI regimes; cost-based factors into the expectation that larger economies (measured as GDP for
(taxation, labour costs); investment incentives; and availability and instance) should be home to greater FDI activity, while greater
quality of hard and soft infrastructures (e.g. electricity and water geographical distance should be associated with less FDI activity.
supply, transport facilities). The related literature nds that traditional gravity factors are
Snyman and Saayman (2009), meanwhile, list 42 host-country among the most robust determinants of FDI ows and stocks in
characteristics that may affect FDI in the tourism industry. These general (Blonigen & Piger, 2011). Specically, FDI activity de-
include political stability, infrastructure (airports, roads), health creases with geographical distance between host and source
and safety (crime, malaria, HIV/AIDS), cost factors and skills, and country, and increases with host and source country GDP. How-
market size (international tourism demand, GDP). The same au- ever, advances in ICT can moderate the role of geographical
thors nd that decisions of where to invest depend on the number distance (Tang & Trevino, 2010). Ghemawat (2001) meanwhile
of international tourists in the destination country. Other factors suggests that distance exists not only in geographical, but also in
consist of tourism-specic assets and amenities (e.g. beaches, nat- administrative, cultural, and economic dimensions. In particular,
ural environment and cultural sites). cultural proximity leads to lower communication and transaction
More recently, Assaf et al. (2015) consider a wide range of costs of doing business thereby increasing FDI ows. Ivanov and
locational factors including business regulations, market size and Ivanova (2016) suggest that cultural proximity between a hotel
growth characteristics and socioeconomic factors (crime rate and chain's home country and the host country is an important factor
corruption). Internationalisation is measured as international for the choice of destination market. For instance Spanish hotel
hotel rooms per capita and international hotel rooms as a per- chains are particularly active in Latin America. Likewise, inter-
centage of total supply based on the Smith Travel research national hotel chains from Hong Kong and Singapore have a large
database. The author distinguishes between seven locational number of FDI projects in China (see Fig. 3 in the appendix).
factors: (i) quality of tourism and related infrastructure, (ii) op- Besides gravity-related factors, the GDP per capita of host and
portunities for tourism, (iii) quality of human resources, (iv) re- source countries is also considered a determinant of FDI activity.
strictions and regulations, (v) political stability, (vi) price FDI activity is expected to increase with both variables, reecting
advantage and (vii) cultural and development proximity. This the fact that FDI in the hotel industry mainly occurs between
study is probably the most comprehensive and detailed analysis countries with a similar level of wealth and factor endowment
in this area using information on more than 20 locational factors (UNCTAD, 2007; Dunning & McQueen, 1982).
and on more than 120 host countries for the period 2007 to 2011. Low labour costs and corporate taxes in the host country have
Employing a random effects panel data model, the authors nd traditionally been a key factor in hotel groups' cross-border in-
that a host country's transport infrastructure, growth of local vestments. Previous empirical studies widely agree that FDI ows
tourism industry, and size and growth of the host country all are highly sensitive to changes in corporate tax rates of the host
have a positive impact on international rooms per capita, and also the parent country and ultimately matters for the
whereas corruption and crime rate have negative effects. Inter- location choice of multinational rms (Feld & Heckemeyer, 2011).
estingly, corporate taxes do not play a role. Furthermore, In general, higher parent country tax rates lead to higher FDI
Kristjansdo ttir (2016) investigates the determinants of FDI in- outows, whereas a higher host country tax rate leads to lower
ows in the hotel sector into the OECD countries with a special FDI inows. Labour cost differentials between the parent and
emphasize on Nordic countries. Boyen and Ogasavara (2013) host country also play an important role for FDI, particularly for
investigate the internationalisation pattern for the host country cost-saving vertical FDI.
Brazil. FDI barriers are likely to discourage inward FDI since they lead
Crime and HIV/AIDS can also have a negative effect on to higher investment costs. Restrictions to international
228 M. Falk / Tourism Management 55 (2016) 225e237
investment inows have many dimensions such as legal, legis- host-country GDP per capita in constant USD;
lative and regulatory frameworks, foreign ownership restrictions, Z1jt1 represents a set of time-varying variables for the respec-
and bureaucracy. Similarly, product-market regulations in the tive host countries, including:
host country lead to additional businesses costs and create bar-
riers to FDI entry. For the OECD countries, Nicoletti, Golub, Statutory tax rates (alternatively, the total tax rate on businesses
Hajkova, Mirza, and Yoo (2003) nd that both FDI restrictions as a percentage of prots)
and product market regulations are signicantly negatively Minimum hourly wages
related to FDI activity. Business regulation indicators such as time and cost to import,
Since the costs of setting up a completely new business often time and cost to start a business as a percentage of income per
exceed the costs of acquiring an existing company, new cross capita, and time and cost to enforce contracts in percent of the
border investments may be more sensitive to cost-saving motiva- claim (The cost in court fees and attorney fees, where the use of
tions than cross-border M&As (Hennart & Park, 1993). Besides cost attorneys is mandatory or common, expressed as a percentage
based factors, FDI barriers in the host country are likely to of the debt value) (World Bank Doing a Business Report).
discourage inward FDI because they lead to higher investment FDI regulatory restrictiveness index
costs. FDI restrictions have many dimensions such as legal, legis- Strength of legal rights index and strength of investor protection
lative, and regulatory frameworks; strength of investor protection; index
foreign ownership restrictions; and bureaucracy (Kalinova, Palerm, Fixed broadband internet subscribers per population
& Thomsen, 2010). Aze mar and Desbordes (2010) suggest that Other safety-, risk-, and health-related factors (life expectancy,
product market regulations in the host country may also lead to AIDS/HIV prevalence, etc.).
additional costs for businesses and barriers to FDI entry. Another
potential FDI determinant involves protection of property rights. Z2ij represents the time-invariant control variables:
Lee and Manseld (1996) nd that weak intellectual property
protection in a given target country has a negative impact on FDI Contiguity
ows from the United States to that country. Likewise, Globerman Sharing a common language
and Shapiro (2003) nd that countries with more transparent Sharing a historical colonial link.
legal systems and better protection of property rights tend to
attract more FDI from multinational US rms. The dependent variable e the number of FDI projects in the
The dependent variable is the number of FDI projects in con- hotel industry e is a count variable. The distribution of the number
struction of new hotels or expansion of existing ones. Other studies of FDI projects is strongly skewed to the right, with an accumula-
have used the share of foreign hotels to total hotels as the measure tion of observations at zero but very few observations with a high
n-Rodrguez, &
of degree of internationalisation (Brida, Driha, Ramo number of hotel FDI projects (see Fig. 5 in the Appendix). Therefore
Scuderi, 2015). Assaf et al. (2015) employ the number of interna- there is a signicant degree of overdispersion (i.e. the variance
tional hotel rooms per capita of host country. Our measure is a ow considerably exceeds the mean). The most common estimators
measure rather than a stock measure. The empirical specication of used for count variables are the Poisson regression and negative
the FDI gravity equation takes into consideration a wide range of binomial models, the latter being an extension of the former
potentially relevant host-country determinants of FDI. As outlined (Cameron & Trivedi, 1998). The negative binomial model is
above, these variables include market size, GDP per capita, business commonly suggested as the preferred estimator because it is less
regulation, cost-based factors (such as labour costs and corporate restrictive than the Poisson model. This holds particularly true
taxes), and FDI restrictions. The FDI gravity equation with xed when the data exhibits a high degree of zero values. In our case,
effects is specied as follows: more than 95 per cent of the observations are at zero or 80 percent
when cumulated over time (see Fig. 5 in appendix). We use the
E FDIijt Xijt exp dij Xijt ijt t ; conditional xed-effects negative binomial estimator for panel
data, which is used in most of the patent literature on over
where represents the parameters and Xijt contains the vector of dispersed count data (Hausman, Hall, & Griliches, 1984). Note that
independent variables: this estimator makes it possible to include time-invariant variables
such as distance and sharing a common language. Allison and
Here, i is the home country, j is the host country, t refers to the Waterman (2002) show, however, that the xed-effects negative
year, and ln is the natural logarithm. The xed parent host country binomial estimator is not a true xed-effects estimator because it
ln GDPHOMEit1 ; ln GDPHOSTjt1 ; ln DISTij ; ln GDPCAPHOMEit1 ; ln GDPCAPHOSTjt1 ;
Xijt
Z1jt1 ; Z2ij ; lt ; aij
effects are denoted by aij and lt are the time dummy variables. The does not necessarily control for all unit-specic effects (unlike the
variables are dened as follows: standard linear xed-effects model). Alternatively, the Poisson
FDIijt is the number of bilateral FDI projects in the hotel sector; pseudo-maximum-likelihood (PPML) estimator is often suggested
GDPHOMEit1 and GDPHOSTjt1 represent home- and host- for count data. However, the estimator is not feasible and often fails
country GDP in constant USD; to converge when a large number of dummy variables (xed ef-
DISTij is the geographical distance between the capital cities of fects) are included.
the investing and host countries;
GDPCAPHOMEit1 and GDPCAPHOSTjt1 represent home- and
M. Falk / Tourism Management 55 (2016) 225e237 229
4. Dataset and descriptive statistics investors is expected to increase in the next years. When looking
at source and host country pairs, results show that US investment
The investment data is derived from the fDi Markets database, in the Chinese hotel sector is the most frequent case with about 85
which contains a register of cross-border investment projects hotel FDI projects for the period 2003 to 2011, followed by the
from around the world from 2003 onwards. In particular, the fDi United Arab Emirates investment in the United Kingdom with 84
Markets database denes FDI activity as the establishment of a projects, US investment in India with 49 projects and Hong Kong
new foreign enterprise or the expansion of an existing foreign investment in China with 43 projects (Fig. 3 in the appendix). At
investment. In case of hotels, FDI projects include new hotel the city level, Dubai receives the largest number of FDI projects in
development and expansion of existing hotels by an international the hotel industry, followed by Shanghai, London, Beijing, Berlin,
investor. Cross-border mergers and acquisitions are not covered. Hong Kong, and Singapore (Fig. 4 in the appendix).
The FDI project information is derived from media sources and Table 3 in the appendix lists the hotel groups with the largest
can be interpreted as investment commitments or investment number of FDI projects. Of the top 20 investing hotel chains, 16 are
plans. The database contains information on the types of FDI located in Western high-income countries. Exceptions include
projects, categorised by function, cluster, parent company name Dubai Holding, Rotana Hotels (both the United Arab Emirates),
and national origin, destination country, number of jobs gener- Shangri-La (Hong Kong) and Banyan Tree (Singapore). Table 4 in the
ated, and amount of capital ow. Since the amounts of FDI ows appendix provides descriptive statistics for the explanatory vari-
and the corresponding number of jobs they generate are based on ables. Finally, Fig. 5 shows the distribution of FDI projects across
crude estimates, we use the number of FDI projects as our source host country pairs.
dependent variable. The fDi Markets database is used by UNCTAD
in its World Investment Report and also widely used in the in- 5. Empirical results
ternational business literature (Di Minin & Zhang, 2010; Hahn,
Bunyaratavej, & Doh, 2011) and in economic geography (Burger, Table 1 shows the results of the xed-effects negative binomial
van der Knaap, & Wall, 2013). estimator, where the xed effects are source-host country pairs.1
Data on distance, neighbouring countries, sharing the same The results are based on between 2500 and 4000 observations
language and having a (former) colonial link are drawn from for around 520 such pairs for the period 2005 to 2011. The table also
Mayer and Zignago (2006). Distance is measured in kilometers includes the marginal effects. Four specications are provided: (i)
between the principal cities of countries weighted by population includes host and source country GDP per capita, along with gravity
size, which thus takes into account the uneven spread of popu- factors, total tax rate, and the cost of enforcing contracts as an in-
lation across a country. dicator of business regulation; (ii) excludes GDP per capita; (iii)
The remaining variables are drawn from various sources. Data includes minimum hourly wages; and (iv) uses the time required to
for corporate taxes are provided by the European Commission in its enforce contracts as an alternative indicator of business regulation.
series Taxation trends and by KPMG. Minimum wage is drawn The latter one is the main specication because it is based on the
from the ILO Global Wage Database and national sources. GDP and largest number of observations.
GDP per capita are drawn from World Bank development in- A number of host-country factors are excluded from the nal
dicators. Business regulation indicators are drawn from the World specication because they are not signicant at conventional
Bank Doing a Business Database. levels (see Table 5 in the appendix). In particular, AIDS/HIV
In our analysis, we include data on 2417 FDI projects in the hotel prevalence, life expectancy, corporate taxes, and strength of legal
industry. Following aggregation across sourceedestination pairs, rights in obtaining credit are each not signicantly different from
we end up with bilateral FDI data for 104 host countries and 50 zero.
parent countries. The time span of the empirical analysis is dictated The results show that a common language, business regulation
by the availability of data. Financial times start to collect FDI data (measured either as the time required to start a business or the cost
from 2003 onwards. Therefore data refers to the period 2003 to of enforcing contracts), hourly wage costs (measured as the mini-
2011 for the descriptive statistics and 2005 to 2011 for the regres- mum wage) and the total tax rate play a signicant role in deter-
sion model. Figs. 1e4 in the appendix document the patterns of mining the number of cross-border investment projects in the
international investment in the hospitality industry across host and hospitality industry.
home countries. Fig. 1 shows the number of foreign direct invest- Minimum hourly wages in the host country have a consider-
ment projects in the accommodation industry by country for the able impact. This is not surprising since hotels employ a larger
top 20 destination countries based on the aforementioned 2147 number of low and medium skilled workers. Surprisingly, the
projects. China, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, corporate tax rate in the host country does not have an impact
India, and Russia are the top ve locations for international in- and is therefore not included in the nal specication. This
vestment in the hospitality industry, accounting for almost one- stands in contrast to the literature (see the recent meta-analysis
third of investment projects worldwide and China alone accounts by Feld & Heckemeyer, 2011). When taxes are measured as total
for 225 hotel FDI projects during the period 2003 to 2011. However, taxes (relative to prots) there is a signicant and negative
this is still small when compared to the total number of hotels built impact. Note that total taxes include labour taxes which are
in China (Gu, Ryan, & Yu, 2012). particularly relevant for investors in labour intensive industries
It is interesting to note that emerging countries receive a large such as the hotel sector. This is the rst main result that cost
portion of international investment in the hotel industry. For the based considerations such as wages and taxes are important for
1990s, UNCTAD (2007) suggests that FDI in accommodation was FDI activity in the hotel sector. An increase in the minimum
concentrated in developed countries. Turning to the source hourly wage by 10 per cent, meanwhile, will reduce the expected
countries, data reveals that the United States is the largest number of FDI projects by 1.3. Finally, a rise in tax rates by one
investor, with about 25 per cent of all FDI projects in the hotel percentage point will lead to a decline of the number of FDI
industry (Fig. 2 in the appendix). After the US, France, Spain, the
UK and the United Arab Emirates are important hotel investors.
China is not included in the Top 20 list of foreign investors in the 1
We use the xtnbreg command in STATA with the fe option to t our data to the
hotel industry. However, overseas investment activity of Chinese conditional xed-effects negative binomial model.
230 M. Falk / Tourism Management 55 (2016) 225e237
Table 1
Fixed-effects negative binomial regression model of the determinants of the FDI projects in the hotel sector.
(i) (ii)
ln geographical distance 0.08 0.46 0.07 0.47 0.04 0.27 0.04 0.28
** **
Common language 0.97 2.27 1.18 1.55 1.01 2.42 1.30 1.64
*
Host ln GDP (const. 2000 US$) 0.15 1.32 0.14 1.42 0.17 1.61 0.16 1.74
*** ** *** **
Source ln GDP (const. 2000 US$) 0.32 2.63 0.30 2.39 0.33 2.76 0.32 2.51
Host ln GDP per cap. (const. int. US$) 0.08 0.37 0.07 0.38
Source ln GDP per cap. (const int. US$) 0.39 1.00 0.36 0.99
** ** ** *
Host cost of enforcing contracts in % of the claim 3.24 2.17 2.97 1.96 2.97 2.08 2.84 1.87
** ** ** **
Host taxes in % of prots 1.97 2.17 1.80 2.00 1.88 2.37 1.80 2.07
*** *** *** ***
Year dummy 2008 (ref 2007) 0.49 5.08 0.52 3.18 0.50 5.16 0.56 3.24
Year dummy 2009 0.07 0.63 0.06 0.61 0.07 0.63 0.06 0.61
Year dummy 2010 0.10 0.93 0.09 0.95 0.12 1.06 0.11 1.08
*** *** *** ***
Year dummy 2011 0.59 4.62 0.46 3.86 0.60 4.79 0.49 3.96
*** ***
Constant 14.03 2.91 11.69 3.05
# of observations 2547 2552
# of parent-host country groups 515 516
Log likelihood 1320 1324
(iii) (iv)
coeff z m e. z coeff z m e. z
** **
ln geographical distance 0.28 2.16 0.14 2.21 0.05 0.41 0.03 0.41
*** ** *
Common language 0.69 2.62 0.42 2.10 0.48 1.85 0.36 1.59
*** *** *** ***
Host ln GDP (const. 2000 US$) 0.22 3.22 0.11 3.41 0.16 2.63 0.11 2.79
*** *** *** ***
Source ln GDP (const. 2000 US$) 0.31 3.94 0.15 4.01 0.24 3.10 0.16 3.11
*** ***
Host cost of enforcing contracts in % 3.98 3.39 1.95 3.18
Host ln time of enforcement of contracts 0.50 ** -2.08 0.33 * 1.95
** **
Host hourly minimum wages 0.26 2.32 0.13 2.33
Year dummy 2006 (ref 2005) 0.00 0.02 0.00 0.02 0.02 0.20 0.02 0.20
*
Year dummy 2007 0.19 1.57 0.10 1.44 0.19 1.66 0.13 1.52
*** *** *** ***
Year dummy 2008 0.66 5.92 0.42 3.88 0.66 6.20 0.56 4.08
** * ** *
Year dummy 2009 0.25 2.07 0.13 1.82 0.24 2.16 0.18 1.91
Year dummy 2010 0.03 0.23 0.01 0.22 0.08 0.68 0.05 0.66
** *** *** ***
Year dummy 2011 0.34 2.47 0.15 2.67 0.37 2.84 0.21 3.05
*** ***
Constant 11.75 4.68 7.65 2.87
# of observations 3736 4218
# of parent-host country groups 547 617
Log likelihood 1835 2097
Notes: ***, ** and * denote signicance at the 1, 5 and 10 per cent signicance levels. The underlying dependent variable is the number of FDI projects in accommodation units
from parent i to host country j in the hospitality industry for the period 2005 to 2011. For the calculations of the marginal effects xed effects are set to zero.
M. Falk / Tourism Management 55 (2016) 225e237 231
6. Conclusions and implications location choice models at the rm level. In particular, logit or nested
logit models of hotel location choices can be used. In doing so it is
In this paper we investigate the determinants of FDI activity in possible to account for characteristics of the multinational hotel
the hospitality industry using a new and unique database of 2,417 chains. For instance, Brida et al. (2015) shows that size and past
hotel FDI projects around the world. The empirical model is based internationalisation experience are the main drivers for the degree
on the FDI gravity model and estimated by the xed-effects nega- of internationalisation for Spanish hotel chains. However, this
tive binomial regression model. The results show that bilateral FDI would require additional data on parent companies (read: hotel
activity in the accommodation industry is signicantly and posi- chains) such as size, age, and previous performance. In principle, fDi
tively related to the size of the host and source countries, and also Markets data can be matched with commercial databases such as
signicantly higher between countries that share a common lan- Orbis. Another research avenue to investigate is the impact of the
guage. A key nding of the study is that business regulations and presence of multinational hotel chains on performance of domestic
the total tax to prots ratio have a strong negative impact on hotels (Mao & Yang, 2016).
bilateral FDI activity in the hotel industry. Furthermore, hourly
wages play a signicant role in inuencing international invest- Acknowledgement
ment projects in new hotels. The geographical distance between
host and parent countries, however, does not affect FDI activity in The author would like to thank the participants of the CBTS 2013
the hotel sector. Other factors such as international tourism reve- workshop in Brunico, Italy, the 2nd World Research Summit for
nue (relative to GDP) and socioeconomic factors such as life ex- Hospitality and Tourism 2013 in Orlando, the ICHRIE 2014 confer-
pectancy are also not relevant for hotel FDI. Overall, the results on ence in San Diego, and the IATE 2015 in Hong Kong for helpful
the hospitality industry do not differ much from those obtained for comments on an earlier draft. In particular, we would like to thank
total FDI ows. However, a new empirical nding is that Maria Santana-Gallego, Stephen Wanhill and Hanqin Qiu Zhang for
geographical distance is not important for hospitality industry helpful comments. This work is partly nanced by the European
unlike total FDI ows. Union within the Framework Service Contract N ENTR/2009/033
An interesting nding is that the United Kingdom, India and (Background Report on FDI ows and impacts on the competi-
Mexico are particularly successful in attracting hotel FDI in the tiveness of the EU industry). We also gratefully acknowledge Eva
period 2005 to 2011 given their market size, taxes, wages and de- Hagsten, Jessica Sloan, and Tyler Schaffner for excellent proof-
gree of business regulations. In contrast, there is still potential for reading of the manuscript.
new hotel FDI projects in China and Russia.
The results of this study have important implications for Appendix
tourism policy makers. Given that the degree of business regu-
lation and total tax rates play a signicant role in attracting FDI in The set of host countries includes: AGO, ALB, ARG, ARM, ATG,
the accommodation industry, reducing the regulatory burden on AUS, AUT, AZE, BEL, BGR, BIH, BLR, BRA, CAN, CHE, CHL, CHN, COL,
new businesses and avoiding tax increases should be a key goal. CPV, CRI, CZE, DEU, DNK, DOM, DZA, EGY, ESP, EST, FIN, FJI, FRA,
This holds particularly true for some African and South American GBR, GEO, GRC, GTM, HKG, HND, HRV, HUN, IDN, IND, IRL, IRQ, ISR,
countries that are characterised by a high degree of business ITA, JOR, JPN, KAZ, KEN, KHM, KOR, KWT, LAO, LBN, LKA, LTU, LVA,
regulations and tax rates. MAR, MDA, MDV, MEX, MKD, MLI, MOZ, MUS, MYS, NGA, NIC, NLD,
This paper is subject to several limitations. First, it focuses NOR, NZL, OMN, PAK, PAN, PER, PHL, POL, PRT, ROM, RUS, RWA,
solely on equity investment, while the major way of entry is non- SAU, SDN, SEN, SGP, SVK, SVN, SWE, SYC, SYR, THA, TUN, TUR, TZA,
equity participation i.e. franchising and management contracts. UGA, UKR, URY, USA, VEN, VNM, WSM, YEM, ZAF and ZMB.
Given that equity participation is the predominant entry mode in The set of parent countries includes: ARE, AUS, AUT, BEL, BRA,
developed countries, the true level of activity of international CAN, CHE, CHN, COL, CZE, DEU, EGY, ESP, EST, FIN, FRA, GBR, GRC,
hotel chains in developing and emerging countries is under- HKG, HUN, IDN, IND, IRL, ISR, ITA, JOR, JPN, KOR, KWT, LTU, LUX,
estimated. Second, FDI projects are dened as new investments MEX, MLT, MYS, NLD, NOR, NZL, PRT, QAT, RUS, SAU, SGP, SWE, THA,
and expansions of existing ones, which does not include cross- TUR, UKR, USA, VEN, VNM and ZAF.
border mergers and acquisitions.
With regard to possible future work, it is possible to estimate
Table 3
Number of FDI projects in the hospitality industry by parent company 2003e2011 (Top 20 hotel chains)
Hotel chain Source country # of FDI projects Hotel chain Source country # of FDI projects
Table 4
Descriptive statistics (2005e2011)
Source: World Bank development indicators, World Bank Doing Business indicators, Mayer and Zignago (2006), ILO, KPMG.
Table 5
Fixed-effects negative binomial regression model of the determinants of the FDI projects in the hotel sector
Total sample
ln dist. comm language ln host GDP ln source GDP enforcing contracts International tourism constant # of obs # of groups
receipts % GDP
(i) coeff. 0.10 0.65 0.11 0.26 3.67 0.25 8.89 4055 604
z 0.83 2.51 1.63 3.37 3.44 1.47 3.68
ln dist. comm language ln host GDP ln source GDP enforcing contracts broadband per 100 people constant
(ii) coeff. 0.12 0.50 0.14 0.24 4.03 5.45 9.55 4146 612
z 0.80 1.92 2.19 3.06 3.63 0.84 4.04
ln dist. comm language ln host GDP ln source GDP enforcing contracts corporate taxes constant
(iii) coeff. 0.03 0.55 0.17 0.23 3.44 0.89 10.24 3887 586
z 0.22 2.02 2.31 2.95 3.23 0.89 4.02
ln dist. comm language ln host GDP ln source GDP enforcing contracts ln cost to import constant
(iv) coeff. 0.06 0.87 0.06 0.32 3.67 0.04 9.99 2554 517
z 0.37 2.23 0.62 2.65 2.27 0.15 2.55
ln dist. comm language ln host GDP ln source GDP enforcing contracts prevalence of HIV % constant
of population
(v) coeff. 0.12 0.67 0.15 0.18 2.77 6.88 7.69 3227 470
z 0.91 2.10 2.08 1.99 2.54 1.20 2.87
ln dist. comm language ln host GDP ln source GDP enforcing contracts ln life expectancy constant
(vi) coeff. 0.03 0.52 0.14 0.24 4.03 1.25 4.19 4213 616
z 0.27 2.00 2.12 3.14 3.60 0.74 0.57
ln dist. comm language ln host GDP ln source GDP enforcing contracts host ratio of international constant # of obs # of groups
tourism arrivals to pop.
(i) coeff. 0.18 0.54 0.42 0.30 9.46 1.07 15.89 1158 167
z 0.79 1.15 2.44 1.73 2.98 2.99 2.57
ln dist. comm language ln host GDP ln source GDP enforcing contracts host broadband constant
per 100 people
(ii) coeff. 0.11 0.12 0.61 0.22 7.08 0.96 20.35 1165 168
Notes: ***, ** and * denote signicance at the 1, 5 and 10 per cent signicance levels.
234 M. Falk / Tourism Management 55 (2016) 225e237
250
225
201
200
150
121
115
107
100
79
75
54 51 51 50 47
50 44 43
39 39 38 36 34 34
Fig. 1. Number of FDI projects in the hotel industry by host country 2003e2011 (Top 20). Source: fDi markets database.
700
620
600
500
400
300
251 247
211
200 178
103 99
100 79
64 60 55
38 37 36 34 30 26 25 20 20
0
Fig. 2. Number of FDI projects in hotel sector by source country 2003e2011 (Top 20). Source: fDi markets database.
M. Falk / Tourism Management 55 (2016) 225e237 235
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Fig. 3. Number of FDI projects for selected source-host country pairs 2003e2011 (Top 20). Source: fDi markets database.
120 119
100
80 79
80
60
47
39 39 39 37
40 36 35
32
27 25 23 22 22 21 21 21 21
20
Fig. 4. Number of FDI projects in the hotel industry by host city 2003e2011 (Top 20). Source: fDi markets database.
236 M. Falk / Tourism Management 55 (2016) 225e237
4089
1000
900
800
700
# source host country pairs
600
500
392
400
300
200
135
100 62
35 34 15 10 13 8 8 13 12 13
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11-15 16-20 >21
# bilateral hotel FDI projects cumulated 2003-2011
Notes: FDI projects are aggregated over time. The number of source home country pairs is 5,020.
Fig. 5. Distribution of the number of hotel FDI projects 2003e2011. Source: fDi markets database.
Hospitality Management, 32, 217e227. Wang, M., & Wong, S. (2009). What drives economic growth? The case of cross-
Mayer, T., & Zignago, S. (2006). Notes on CEPII's distances measures. border M&A and greeneld FDI activities. Kyklos, 62(2), 316e330.
Morley, C., Rossello , J., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2014). Gravity models for tourism World Bank. (2010). Investing across borders 2010: Indicators of foreign direct in-
demand: theory and use. Annals of Tourism Research, 48, 1e10. vestment regulation in 87 economies. Washington D.C: World Bank.
Newell, G., & Seabrook, R. (2006). Factors inuencing hotel investment decision Yang, Y., Luo, H., & Law, R. (2014). Theoretical, empirical, and operational models in
making. Journal of Property Investment & Finance, 24(4), 279e294. hotel location research. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 36,
Nicoletti, G., Golub, S., Hajkova, D., Mirza, D., & Yoo, K. Y. (2003). Policies and in- 209e220.
ternational integration: Inuences on trade and foreign direct investment, OECD Zhang, H. Q., Guillet, B. D., & Gao, W. (2012). What determines multinational hotel
economics department working papers 359. OECD Publishing. groups' locational investment choice in China? International Journal of Hospi-
Quer, D., Claver, E., & Andreu, R. (2007). Foreign market entry mode in the hotel tality Management, 31(2), 350e359.
industry: the impact of country eand rm- specic factors. International Busi- Zwinkels, R. C. J., & Beugelsdijk, S. (2010). Gravity equations: workhorse or Trojan
ness Review, 16, 362e376. horse in explaining trade and FDI patterns across time and space? International
Snyman, J. A., & Saayman, M. (2009). Key factors inuencing foreign direct in- Business Review, 19(1), 482e497.
vestment in the tourism industry in South Africa. Tourism Review, 64(3), 49e58.
Song, H., Dwyer, L., Li, G., & Cao, Z. (2012). Tourism economics research: a review
and assessment. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(3), 1653e1682. Martin Falk is Senior Research Fellow at the Austrian
Steiner, C. (2010). An overestimated relationship? Violent political unrest and Institute of Economic Research (WIFO). His research in-
tourism foreign direct investment in the Middle East. International Journal of terests are in the eld of tourism research, applied eco-
Tourism Research, 12(6), 726e738. nomics, empirical industrial economics and international
Tang, L., & Trevino, L. J. (2010). ICT development and the regional vs. global stra- economics. He has been engaged in several scientic
tegies of MNEs. Multinational Business Review, 18(4), 51e70. projects prepared for the European Commission. His work
United Nations Center on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC). (1982). Trans- has been published in various international journals. He
national corporations in international tourism. New York, NY: United Nations holds a master's degree in economics from the University
Publication, Garner and Bachri. of Kiel (Germany) and a doctoral degree in economics from
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). (2007). Fdi in the University of Regensburg (Germany). From 1996 to
tourism: the Development Dimension. UN. 2002 he was a research fellow at the Centre for European
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). (2009). .World Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim (Germany).
investment prospect survey 2009 e2011. United Nations, New York and Geneva.