Tourism Management 29 (2008) 940–949
Seasonal concentration of the hotel demand in Costa del Sol:
A decomposition by nationalities
Antonio Ferna
´
ndez-Morales
a,
Ã
, Marı
´
a Cruz Mayorga-Toledano
b,1
a
Facultad de Ciencias Econo
´
micas y Empresariales, Departamento de Estadı
´
stica y Econometrı
´
a, Universidad de Ma
´
laga, Despacho 2108D,
Campus El Ejido, 29071 Ma
´
laga, Spain
b
Facultad de Ciencias Econo
´
micas y Empresariales, Departamento de Derecho Privado Especial, Universidad de Ma
´
laga, Despacho 2302,
Campus El Ejido, 29071 Ma
´
laga, Spain
Received 16 July 2007; accepted 22 November 2007
Abstract
Costa del Sol is a mature Mediterranean destination in the South of Spain with a degree of seasonality that has shown little variation
during the last 20 years. In this paper, we apply the decomposition of the Gini index of seasonal concentration by nationalities. The main
outcome of this decomposition is the estimation of relative contributions to the overall seasonal concentration and marginal effects by
nationalities. These measures can be of great help in the design of counter-seasonal policies. Our results suggest that planners interested
in reducing seasonality may concentrate their efforts in consolidating markets with negative marginal effect over the index of
concentration, like the British and Nordic ones. In addition, marketing targets may be focused primarily in the winter season for the
markets with positive relative marginal effect.
r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Seasonality measures; Gini index; Hotel demand; Legal framework
1. Introduction
Spain’s Costa del Sol is a highly significant tourist
location. Placed in the South of Spain in the far west of the
Mediterranean Sea, Costa del Sol’s 200 km of coastline
attracts about 9 million tourists yearly (3.3 domestic and
5.6 international in 2005) (SOPDE, 2006). Major tourist
resorts are placed in the municipalities of Torremolinos,
Marbella, and Fuengirola.
The tourist ‘boom’ in Costa del Sol did not occur until
the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. Four
decades later, there are 135,000 available bed places, of
which 78,000 are in hotels (according to the Spanish
National Statistics Institute sources). In terms of hotel
demand, in 2006 there were 4.14 million of visitors
accommodated in hotels, of which 1.97 million were
domestic and 2.14 million were international.
There are a number of elements that have contributed to
Costa del Sol’s success: the climate (an annual average
temperature of 181C and less than 400 mm of rainfall
yearly), an international airport (the fourth busiest airport
in Spain with almost 10 million passengers each year), and
good transportation and linkage to the main national cities
by train and road.
Tourism plays a key role in the region Andalucı
´
a.
Economically speaking, tourism represented 12.1% of the
regional GDP and 11.1% of regional employment in 2005
(EXCELTUR, 2006). It is thus the economic importance of
tourism that underlies the involvement of private and
public sectors in the improvement and development of
tourism in the region (largely in sustainability and quality
features). In Spain, there is significant decentralization in
this field, whereby the regional council (comunidad
auto
´
noma) is the basic administrative unit and possesses
extensive legislative powers. The regional government of
Andalucı
´
a has recently promulgated a law specifically
ARTICLE IN PRESS
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0261-5177/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2007.11.003
Ã
Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 952137189; fax: +34 952131294.
E-mail addresses: afdez@uma.es (A. Ferna
´
ndez-Morales),
mcmayorga@uma.es (M.C. Mayorga-Toledano).
1
Tel.: +34 952131192; fax: +34 952131294.