Competitiveness factors influencing tourists’ intention to return and recommend: evidence from a distressed destination

Abstract

Assessing destination competitiveness from a tourist perspective has been limited, especially for distressed destinations such as Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has been facing ongoing political and economic challenges for more than two decades which puts pressure on the growth of the tourism industry. However, all destinations compete in the same space for tourists' attention, forcing marketers to continuously develop strategies to enhance competitiveness and increase tourist returns and recommendations. This paper focuses on identifying competitiveness factors that influence tourists' intention to return and recommend. Based on a sample of 450 international tourists to Zimbabwe, results show that unique to a distressed destination, the residents' hospitality and friendliness is the most important predictor for the intention to return. This emphasises the role of residents in making the destination more competitive and attractive. General amenities, attractions and destination management are also significant predictors of return intentions. Tourists' intentions to recommend are largely predicted by the destination's resources. Encouraging visitors to revisit and recommend can assist a distressed destination in increasing visitor numbers on a limited marketing budget. Understanding these factors could also help managers to improve the negative image of the destination.

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

“…The eventual consequence of these strategic efforts may be located in the social welfare of the destination (Chin and Hampton, 2020). From a demand perspective, if tourists perceive a destination to be more competitive than others, they may be highly likely to return or recommend the destination to others (El-Said and Aziz, 2019; Woyo and Slabbert, 2021a, 2021b; Zainuddin et al , 2016). This behavioral intention may eventually translate into true destination loyalty (Wong, 2017) or customer-based brand equity (Wong, 2018; Wong and Teoh, 2015).…”

Value co-creation and destination brand equity: understanding the role of social commerce information sharing

“…Dialogue is required between several tourism stakeholders to manage relationships in tourist-to-tourist and tourist-to-tourism supplier value co-creation process (Giuseppe et al , 2022; Taghizadeh et al , 2016). The dialogue between stakeholders is important because it enhances the destination’s market performance and competitiveness (Woyo and Slabbert, 2021a). We argue that achieving this requires stakeholders to have access to resources including information.…”

“…Consequently, destination marketers must carefully think about the marketing strategies that a destination can employ to strengthen its brand equity. Destinations brands with higher equity are competitive and capable of attracting repeat visitors (Woyo and Slabbert, 2021a, b). However, the conceptualisation and theorisation of destination brand equity is still in its infancy (Šerić et al , 2017) particularly the unpacking of the elements that define and measure equity (González-Mansilla et al , 2019).…”

“…Tourism plays an important economic development role in several destinations globally (Comerio and Strozzi, 2019). This explains why tourism destination development is the driving force for competition between destinations (Molina et al, 2010;Woyo and Slabbert, 2021a). To succeed in competitive environments, destination managers should ensure that destination brands are attractive and competitive (Pike and Page, 2014;Woyo and Slabbert, 2021b).…”

“…Tourism plays an important economic development role in several destinations globally (Comerio and Strozzi, 2019). This explains why tourism destination development is the driving force for competition between destinations (Woyo and Slabbert, 2021a). Destinations are increasingly becoming differentiated because of “reduced barriers, in terms of investment, information generation and dissemination, travel accessibility and means of transport” (Giannopoulos et al , 2021, p. 148).…”