study of Taiwanese hotel stock performance after the SARS outbreak by Chen et al.
(2007) showed that the industry experienced the most serious damage in terms of stock
price decline (approximately 29 percent) in the immediately following month among
many industries on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. This was considered an irrational
market response because decreasing occupancy and average daily rate caused
panicking hotel investors to perceive an abnormally higher risk and sell off shares that
were considered overvalued.
Kim et al. (2002b) argued that hotel REITs are no more attractive than other REIT
sectors because oversupply and low occupancy rates since 1997 have greatly hurt their
stock returns and increased volatility. They advised that hotel REITs must be very
cautious about the financial risk associated with debt leverage and the negative impact
of new equity issues. High debt leverage could greatly increase investment risk
because of uncertainty about a hotel REIT firm, particularly if firm-specific events
occur, such as contract loss and earnings alerts, that may cause a drastic decline in
stock (Gu and Kim, 2003).
Earnings per share (EPS) has been shown to serve as a good proxy for the
fundamental value of stock prices in the hospitality sector (Chen et al., 2009).
Hospitality stock prices driven by EPS exist because the industry is involved in less
noise trading and is smaller compared to other industries in terms of market
capitalization. The authors argued that hospitality stock investors should pay more
attention to underlying performance in terms of EPS. They also demonstrated a
long-term relationship between stock prices and EPS, and that EPS significantly
predicts changes in stock returns for the hospitality industry. Similarly, Upneja et al.
(2008) demonstrated a significant and positive relationship between earnings
manipulation indicators and stock price increases for restaurant firms.
Repricing stock options can also send certain messages to investors. Denizci (2007)
showed that hospitality companies are more likely to reprice stock options after a stock
price decrease accompanied by a market-wide fall, compared to a control sample of
companies matched by size and price decrease. She found that repricing firms are
significantly smaller (in terms of market capitalization) and have lower stock price
returns and dividends per share.
Hospitality stock investment is rather complicated, because the volatility of
investment values can be attributed to many factors using either technical or
fundamental analysis. While advanced mathematical models (e.g. Chen et al., 2007;
Chen et al., 2009) have been introduced and tested with empirical data to offer investors
some guidance, it should be noted that stock price movements reflect investors’
predictions and speculations for a firm’s future. That is, individual judgment, whether
rational or not, plays an important role in investment decisions. For example, Tsai and
Gu (2007c) argued that the interplay between stock market investment and casino
gaming activities is a result of wealth and substitution effects. Future studies could
also study hospitality stock investment qualitatively to explore the relevant factors.
4. Hospitality dividend policy
Firms reward investors through cash or stock dividends or stock price appreciation.
Using logistic regression analysis to examine the financial features of firms that did
and did not pay dividends, Kim and Gu (2009) showed that firm size (measured by total
assets) and profitability (measured by ROA) are significant drivers of dividend payout