A Composite Index to Measure Smartness and Competitiveness of Heritage Tourism Destination and Historic Building

Abstract

The key issue of this current study is related to shaping the attractiveness of heritage destinations, highlighting the significance of reuse and upgrading their historical buildings to achieve a high level of competitiveness and distinctiveness through a smart approach. Some of these cultural assets and events tend to be monotonous, and not so attractive for various categories of tourists, which negatively affects investment opportunities, tourism development, and social and economic resources. Furthermore, previous works have criticized the lack of evidence to support that the structure contains critical attributes and measurement items linked to the competitiveness of smart heritage destinations. As a result, this study aims to design and develop a composite index for evaluating these destinations and their buildings, which includes nine dimensions (attributes) and a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) of intelligent performance and competitiveness, reflecting the combination and noticing the distinct perspective between them. A mixed-methods approach was used between qualitative and quantitative methods to perform content validation on the proposed index. Furthermore, a pilot study was implemented for tourism heritage destinations to improve the quality and efficiency of the proposed index. Then, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to analyze the data to develop the proposed index and measure its validity and reliability. Finally, the proposed composite index was finalized with 139 KPIs and applied to a case study (Salah El-Din Citadel). After that, we validated its utility in providing a quantitative evaluation of this heritage destination, identifying critical intervention priorities, and determining dimensions that need to be restructured. Additionally, it highlighted recommendations for future improvements to strengthen these heritage destinations to become smart heritage destinations capable of competition in the tourism sector.

Destination competitiveness since 2010: research themes, approaches, and agenda

“…Figure 3, which displays the analysis of the keywords across papers, highlights the contributions of the “smart” theme to “tourism” and “competitiveness.” The concept of “smart tourism” has been the subject of an emerging body of research. This systematic review recorded 12 articles (Altinay and Kozak, 2021; Boes et al , 2016; Chan et al , 2022; Cimbaljević et al , 2019; Della Corte et al , 2017; Ferreira and Perks, 2020; Milićević et al , 2020a, 2020b; Nematpour et al , 2022; Nyaboro et al , 2021; Petrović et al , 2017; Rucci et al , 2022; Selim et al , 2021) that linked smart tourism and technology use to destination competitiveness. Cimbaljević et al (2019) developed a smart destination competitiveness model by incorporating smart city components including smart mobility, people, living, government, economy and environment.…”

“…Another path analysis through Leximancer (Figure2) indicated the importance of sustainable tourism development to tourism prosperity and destination competitiveness. Fifteen papers that focused on sustainability to discuss destination competitivenessDimanche, 2017, 2019;Armenski et al, 2018;Blanco-Cerradelo et al, 2018;Cucculelli and Goffi, 2016;Dodds and Holmes, 2020;Selim et al, 2021) that linked smart tourism and technology use to destination competitiveness. Cimbaljevi c et al (2019) developed a smart destination competitiveness model by incorporating smart city components including smart mobility, people, living, government, economy and environment.…”

Socio-spatial vulnerability assessment of heritage buildings through using space syntax

“…It is the most recognised measure of reliability. It is based on repeating the identical experiment and receiving the same findings every time [ 47 ]. Based on Cronbach's Alpha examination, validity was also determined, viewing the variables' suitability for measuring SSV.…”

Spatial Distribution of Relationship between Historical Monuments and Tourism: The Case Study of Bihor County in Romania

“…Several studies have aimed to model the relationships between heritage tourism components to increase its efficiency based on local conditions. Studies conducted by Xu et al [43], Wang et al [44], van der Zee et al [45], Selim et al [46], Tchetchik et al [47] used spatial syntax methods to improve tourists' spatial cognition by relating the road network to tourists' spatial cognition [43], or to improve tourism services in historic areas by identifying an optimal distribution of services based on the road network [44].…”

“…Determination of the constant value k, in order to classify territorial administrative units/localities into value groups according to the synthetic index related to historical monuments and tourism [45][46][47]:…”