Survival analysis of the Spanish hotel industry

The main objective of this study is an analysis of survival in the Spanish hotel industry. We used a sample of 1033 hotels opened from 1997 to 2009, examining financial and non-financial variables, including size; location; type of hotel; management, economic and financial structure and the year they opened, whether during an expansion or crisis period. The methodology included an econometric analysis of survival, using the non-parametric Kaplan-Meier estimator of constructed variables, in order to detect the particular influence of each variable. Semi-parametric regression was done with the Cox proportional hazards model, confirming which variables clearly influenced the survival of hotels and which signs existed for each analysed variables' influence. The survival of hotels depends on their size, location, management and launch in a time of prosperity. However, survival rates were not significantly tied to particular types of hotels or configurations of their economic and financial structures.