Abstract
The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (T&TCI) seems to be the most used measure of a destination’s competitiveness, even though the methodology underlying its calculation is characterized by numerous shortcomings. The viability of T&TCI as a reliable measure of a country’s competitive capability should stem from its ability to explain and/or predict the performance-related consequences of tourism activity within a destination. To check whether the T&TCI can do that, a model has been constructed and tested on a sample of Mediterranean countries for the 2007 – 2017 period. The analysis revealed that the change in the T&TCI score often does not relate to a change in the performance-related indicators of tourism activity selected. Hence, the T&TCI should not be regarded as a reliable measure of a destination’s competitiveness.
Highlights
Under the influence of growing tourist demand on the global level (UNWTO, 2019), the proliferation of attractive tourist destinations across the world, and the ever greater segmentation of tourist interests (Gonzales & Bello, 2002; Trauer, 2007; Sung et al, 2016; Dolnicar, 2019), the tourism market is characterized more and more by a growing struggle to ensure the interest/affinity of the demand segments (Kunst, 2017)
Bearing in mind that some of the theoretically important assumptions underlying the concept of destination competitiveness have been neglected and that there is a large range of methodological peculiarities in the calculation of the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (T&TCI), the intention of this paper is to demonstrate that the T&TCI score for an individual country by no means represents an unbiased and objective measure of its tourism sector competitiveness
The analysis indicates that the change in the T&TCI score for the selected countries throughout the 2007 – 2017 period does not move in unison with the changes in two selected performance-related indicators of tourism activity
Summary
Under the influence of growing tourist demand on the global level (UNWTO, 2019), the proliferation of attractive tourist destinations across the world, and the ever greater segmentation of tourist interests (Gonzales & Bello, 2002; Trauer, 2007; Sung et al, 2016; Dolnicar, 2019), the tourism market is characterized more and more by a growing struggle to ensure the interest/affinity of the (targeted) demand segments (Kunst, 2017). The fact that a tourism destination is more infrastructurally equipped, more environmentally regulated, more advanced in healthcare and education provision and less risky in terms of personal safety, does not necessarily mean that such a destination is more competitive in the sense that it is capable of permanently increasing its market share, or generating higher levels of tourist expenditure per capita (Kunst, 2009) Due primarily to their mostly conceptual nature, the theoretical models addressing the elements that determine a destination’s competitiveness (Hassan, 2000; Ritchie & Crouch, 2000; Dwyer & Kim, 2003; Heath, 2003; Enright & Newton, 2004; Mangion et al, 2005; Hall, 2007; Goffi, 2013; 2015; Cvelbar et al 2016; Abreu-Novais et al, 2018) proved to be unsuitable for practical use, due predominantly to their inability to provide an effective way to measure a destination’s competitive capacity. T&TCI formally addresses the issue of tourism destination competitiveness measurement and comparison, the calculations involved have a number of methodological problems regarding the choice of relevant indicators, and the objectivity of ratings, as well as the comparison of the results (Crouch, 2007; Mazanec & Ring, 2011; Wu, Lan & Lee, 2012; Ivanov & Webster, 2013; Mendola & Volo, 2017; Croes & Semrad, 2018; Guita Martinez et al, 2020; Magrini & Grassini, 2020)
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