The Competitiveness of Tourist Destinations: A Review of the Scientific Literature

Abstract

The competitiveness of tourist destinations worldwide is of vital importance for any destination that wishes to develop and improve its positioning in the global, national and/or regional market, because the actors of tourist destinations are aware that the greater the number of tourists and tourist spending in the destination, the greater the economic development that directly and indirectly affects the different actors, the ultimate objective being to improve the quality of life of the people in the community. Therefore, this study focuses on carrying out a review of the scientific literature on the competitiveness of tourist destinations, with the objective of identifying the dimensions, factors and indicators used in the different models of destination competitiveness, which can be applied to a tourist destination at the present time and have greater clarity when evaluating it. In this sense, a bibliographic review of 40 scientific articles from Scopus and Science Direct published between 2000 and 2021 was carried out, of which 29 articles were selected based on the criteria of the proposed models of competitiveness of tourist destinations, factors and indicators used. The results of the study contemplate a theoretical framework of competitiveness in itself, the competitiveness of tourist destinations and the models of competitiveness of tourist destinations, making an analysis of the differences and similarities between them; likewise, indicators used to analyze the destination are presented, and finally, studies that have used these theories and models in different countries are presented. Finally, it is concluded that the theories of the competitiveness of tourist destinations that have most influenced these models have been those proposed by Ritchie and Crouch, and Dwyer and Kim, since they have between 7 and 9 factors in common and 57 indicators.