Tourism destination competitiveness is a multidimensional concept that is widely studied in the academic literature, but multiple factors make its measurement a difficult task. In this article, we design a synthetic index to rank the 80 countries that attract the majority of international tourists by level of tourism competitiveness. In order to do this, we use all of the simple variables included in the 2017 Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index, proposing a new methodology for the construction of this synthetic index, which it solves the problems of aggregation of variables expressed in different measures, arbitrary weighting and duplicity of information; issues that remain unresolved by the TTCI. Likewise, we analyse the most influential dimensions in tourism competitiveness. Air transport infrastructures, cultural resources and ICT readiness are the key dimensions that explain the main disparities.

No abstract

Tourism has established itself as an instrument that supports the sustainable development of rural destinations and has both, negative and positive effects. The annual instability of the flow of visitors, known as tourist seasonality, contributes to the intensification of some of these negative effects. In this work, we perform an analysis on the evolution of the seasonality intensity during the process of consolidation of the Spanish rural destinations, designed to improve the knowledge about the tourist activity's capacity to generate a sustainable development alternative steady throughout the year. To guarantee an accurate measurement, we propose the use of a synthetic indicator as a methodological innovation, such as the Method of Distance Pena DP2, that brings together the supply and demand variables. We can observe that tourist seasonality is restrained in smaller destinations that experience a growth in terms of tourists' arrivals, so it is associated with the early stages of the consolidation process. However, the destinations with a lower seasonality level do not match with those that welcome a larger number of visitors. Those destinations with the potential to obtain more benefits because of their level of consolidation do not have the necessary annual stability to provide employment and income in a steady way throughout the year.

Several sustainable development strategies in rural areas have relied on tourism as a tool for economic growth and job creation. The alternating peak and valley periods that seasonality entails—and their corresponding negative economic, environmental, or social impacts—may somewhat condition the success of these policies. The aim of this article is to analyze whether rural destinations suffer from higher levels of seasonality as compared with those of beach and urban tourism. The analysis is applied to Andalusia, a region in southern Spain, one of the major tourist destinations in Europe and a provider of diverse tourist products. The methodological innovation and contribution of this study is to measure seasonality intensity by means of a DP2 synthetic indicator that gathers information derived from various facets of seasonality, ultimately allowing us to overcome the disadvantages of single-variable assessment. We conclude that seasonality in rural tourism should not be evaluated generally, since each destination has specific conditions that determine stability or seasonality in the area. We obtain evidence that some rural areas show a lower level of seasonality than cultural-urban destinations (the most stable in terms of annual activity). Thus, rural destinations will not suffer from the problems associated with high seasonality. Due to the great differences among rural destinations, this methodology should be applied to regions with different characteristics to complement the conclusions drawn from this study and determine which destinations call for public policies and specific strategies to reduce seasonality.

The concentration of tourists at certain times of the year can damage sensitive environments. The use of peer-to-peer vacation rental websites has increased greatly during the last decade. This system could either reduce seasonality in touristic destinations where the tourist activity takes place throughout the year at a lower price or on the contrary, it could increase the number of visitors at certain times of the year even more. This paper intends to analyze the effect that these platforms have on tourism seasonality in order to calculate if they help reduce or increase the pressure on the destinations. To do so, the Gini Index has been applied to one of the main touristic spots in Europe, the Balearic Islands in Spain. The conclusion is that this type of accommodation has aggravated the problem, generating a greater concentration of tourists and a higher pressure on the resources of the islands.