Causal impacts of tourism on housing markets in Mediterranean destinations: From financial crisis to post-pandemic era

This paper analyses the relationship between the evolution of residential rental and housing prices and tourism activity. We focus on four Spanish Mediterranean destinations over a time frame that covers the two major global shocks of recent decades: the Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Methodologically, the study employs a non-interventionist quasiexperimental design based on an Interrupted Time Series framework, allowing us to assess how the structural characteristics of each destination—together with tourism-related and structural factors shaping property markets—act as amplifiers or dampeners of housing price dynamics across different tourism specialisation models. From these results, relevant policy implications can be derived.