Competitiveness in Tourism: A Theoretical Outlook

Abstract

Present-day, tourism is declared as one of the leading sectors of development, a major source of revenues, jobs and prosperity. Competitiveness is a key element of the tourism industry. The ability to compete in a rapidly growing world tourism market is a prime concern. Understanding competitiveness and performance in tourism and measuring it is challenging. Although a large amount of literature about tourism destination competitiveness has been produced, including measurement models applied, it is a topic that still offers an important range of debate. This paper aims at presenting the progress of research on tourism competitiveness term and tries to provide a general framework that could be expanded to further study. Since the 1990s, research efforts have been conducted towards developing a theoretical and conceptual basis for competitiveness assessment. Many researchers have applied the competitiveness theory as a critical concept to explain tourism development, destination management and tourism strategies. The paper concludes that, in spite of the various attempts to explain the competitiveness in tourism, the literature is still confronted with the ambiguity of the concept and the complexity of its elements, which are difficult to measure.