Tourism Destination Competitiveness: From Definition to Explanation?

This article contributes to the recent literature on tourism destination competitiveness including the gargantuan compilations of competitiveness factors by Ritchie and Crouch (2003), or Dwyer and Kim (2003), and, particularly, the widely known prototype of a Competitiveness Monitor (CM) initiated by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). The central question underlying this article is whether an arrangement of data such as the CM can be transformed from a purely definitional system into an explanatory model. A number of criticisms regarding the way of constructing the CM, its epistemological nature, and the absence of any accessibility factors lead to a moderately revised system that is explored by latent variable modeling. The empirical findings support this type of model, which tends to better explain the levels of tourism activity already achieved than sustained tourism growth. A discussion of the detailed results produces several recommendations on how to adjust the future strategy of research on destination competitiveness.