Tourism Economics, 2011, 17 (2), 321–338 doi: 10.5367/te.2011.0044 Pricing the time and location of a stay at a hotel or apartment CATALINA JUANEDA Departament d’Economia Aplicada, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Cra. De Valldemossa, km 7.5, 07122 Palma (Illes Balears), Spain. E-mail: nati.juaneda@uib.es. JOSEP MARIA RAYA Escola Universitaria del Maresme, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ernest Lluch s/n, 08302 Mataró (Barcelona), Spain. E-mail: jmraya@tecnocampus.cat. FRANCESC SASTRE Departament d’Economia Aplicada, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Cra. De Valldemossa, km 7.5, 07122 Palma (Illes Balears), Spain. E-mail: turfsa@uib.es. This paper presents a comparative study of the price component of the physical characteristics and the location of apartments and hotels in order to compare their effect on the final price of both types of accommodation. In addition, the authors carry out a comparative study of the price component of the point in time at which the stay was offered. For the price component of the actual place, substantial variability can be observed in the case of hotels, whereas little variability can be observed in the case of apartments. When seasonality is compared, slightly lower seasonality can be observed for hotels in relation to apartments throughout the period under study, and higher seasonality observed in the case of Spanish resorts (particularly the Balearic Islands) in comparison with French ones. Keywords: hedonic price method; accommodation prices; seasonality; hotels; apartments JEL classification: C21; D12 The authors are grateful for funding from the Regional Government of Catalonia’s Vice-Presidential Department for the study ‘Residential Tourism and a Sustainability Index for Modes of Accommo- dation’. They are also grateful for comments by Daniel Montolio of the Regional Government of Catalonia’s Treasury Department.