Estimating the land opportunism of hotel investment in generating real estate appreciation and firms' market value

The scarcity of well-located land is becoming an important concern for business operations around the world. This study sheds lights on the mechanisms of land speculation by explaining how Chinese businesses' investment in hotels leads to real estate appreciation and firms' market value increase. This study proposes that hotel investment not only has the potential to increase firm value through the hotels' operational revenues; land opportunism may also lead to real estate appreciation and associated increases in market value. The study investigates the effect of land opportunism in the Chinese hotel investment context. Publicly listed companies that invest into hotel businesses to diversify their business were selected as the main sample. The findings show that hotel investment improves Chinese firms' value. Specifically, hotel investment increases these firms' real estate value and the hotel real estate appreciation drives the increases in the companies' value in the securities market. This mode of hotel investment is promoted by both local governments and hotel developers. It is possibly harmful to the hotel sector's sustainable development; thus, strict regulations may be needed to manage the land use policies.