For each establishment the minimum price per person per
night and the number of beds were recorded. This minimum
price was used for two reasons. First, it was not possible to
calculate separate prices for the different seasons as many
establishments and individual districts have their own “seasons”
that deviate from the typical high and low seasons.
Second, many establishments had a range of room types with
varying quality levels, and as a consequence a large range of
prices. The minimum price is, therefore, the lowest price at
which the hotel is willing to accommodate someone for. From
the calculated minimum price per person per night and the
listed capacity data, the district average minimum price per
person per night was calculated for the three groups of accommodation.
The accommodation listings are from the years
2001 to 2005. The year 2002 was taken as the base year. The
prices for the other years were adjusted to 2002 prices using the
German consumer price index for accommodation and hospitality
services (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2005). If there was no
average price for 2002 then the price for 2003 was used and so
on until 2005. If there was not a price available for 2005 then the
data for 2001 was used. In this case, the prices were converted
from DM into Euro. The resulting dataset covers 92 coastal
districts and has 189 observations. Note that as there are three
types of accommodation each district may be represented by
more than one observation. The 48 districts that are not
covered in the dataset may have specialised in self-catering
accommodation or tourism might not have developed there at
all.