Local supply of accommodation establishments heterogeneously affected by high-speed broadband infrastructure

This study investigates empirically if access to high-speed broadband infrastructure is of importance for the supply of accommodation establishments across all 290 municipalities in Sweden. Control factors include time, population growth and road density. Disaggregated data from several official registers are linked together for the analysis covering the years 2011-2023. Results from the fixed effects Poisson estimations with spatial lags show that there is a significant and positive relationship between the number of hotels and cottage villages on the one hand and the high-speed broadband access on the other, although no associations are found with hostels, conference facilities or camping sites. The significant relationship is nonlinear, indicating increasing returns above a certain threshold. Strongest effects appear for cottage villages, as well as municipalities close to ski resorts or in decline. A spatial dependency exists for the hotels and high-speed broadband access.