Abstract
Travel and tourism represent one of the
largest industries in the world as far as percentages of GDP and occupation are
concerned, consequently, asset managers could be interested to select listed
hotel stocks in their portfolios. The hotel industry has shown some
difficulties not only in periods of financial, but also during the health
crisis (Covid-19), when global and local restrictions on travel and tourism had
a negative effect on the hotel sector. This study aims to analyze how listed
hotel stocks could improve their contribution to portfolio diversification in
different stages of the market. First, we use a constraint mean-variance
approach to analyze the effect of diversification, and then we study the
difference in the performance of the hotel sector by using the Risk-Adjusted
Performance (RAP) measure. We analyze three sample periods: a) the whole sample
(01/2000-09/2021); b) the Financial Crisis sample (06/2007-06/2012) and c) the
COVID sample (02/2021-09/2021). Our findings contribute to a good understanding
of financial patterns in the hotel industry as an asset class at different
stages and support our hypothesis of its possible positive contribution in
terms of diversification and performance.
JEL classification numbers: G11, G12, G15.
Keywords: Portfolio Management, Hotel Stocks, Financial Crisis,
Health Crisis, Tourism.