Ecosystem Model Proposal in the Tourism Sector to Enhance Sustainable Competitiveness

Abstract

Service companies in developed countries represent 70–80% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In Spain, within the service sector, tourism is the main contributor and is growing annually. This is obviously an opportunity for the country due to its benefits and economic effects but at the same time a well-structured, sustainable and competitive model for its continued development is needed in order to adopt best practices and reference innovative models from other sectors. A qualitative approach using Case Study, Grounded Theory and Delphi Method has been conducted to study the tourism sector in the city of Gandia, Valencia (Spain). Results show that a tourist destination with its different components and stakeholders involved in its value chain can be interpreted as an ecosystem and so reference ecosystem models could be adopted to boost the development of a region. Considering the results obtained, this study can contribute to the development of a tourist destination in a sustainable and innovative way.

Measurement Development for Tourism Destination Business Environment and Competitive Advantages

“…With the advancement of human society, the assessment of tourism competitiveness cannot be based only on primary consideration on tourism performance and competitive advantages, but from a more progressive insight. In particular, how to promote the sustainable tourism competitiveness through enhancing entrepreneurship ecosystem [27], constructing the positive relationships between the government and tourism development [43], and optimizing business management environment [3,4,25,26,44] has become a meaningful research issue, which leads to the suitable measures, and a conceptual framework utilized to evaluate a tourist destination competitiveness requires a critical investigation of the literature to identify the sufficient reinforcement of information on the destination business environment (DBE) and destination competitive advantages (DCA). That is, the determinants that affect the competition level of tourism destinations must be essentially related to the competitiveness of tourism-related constituent firms and based on the generic business strategy views identified by Porter [42], Miles and Snow [14], and Stevenson and Jarillo [15].…”

“…Compared with tourist perspective, it is more convincing to analyze destination competitiveness from a business perspective, which is supportive because the various stakeholders with rich tourism business experience are the real specialists in formulating accurate decisions and assessing objective investment conditions while complying with local regulations [45,48]. The most recent research demonstrated that the sustainable destination management inputs and competitiveness are inseparable from technology innovation, business management environment, entrepreneurship, and government supports [18,[25][26][27]43,44,49].…”

“…Porter [13,42] concentrated on industrial structure (task environment) to hinder the business environment estimation from being far-sighted and wide-ranging, and five forces of competitive pressure are roughly asserted, including competition from substitutes, entrants, and established rivals, and the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers. The recent trend in the study of sustainable tourism competitiveness was systematically discussed by Morant-Martínez et al [27] in terms of entrepreneurship and tourism ecosystem: their study proposed that the entrepreneurship and tourism ecosystem are tightly related with five elements containing markets, policy, finance, human capital, culture, and supporting resources, which majorly incorporate the specific factors such as leadership, government, financial capital, non-government and educational institutions, labor, infrastructures, and networks.…”

“…Considering the tourism practitioners, the indicators that require more consideration incorporate the ability and specialization of operating new technologies, availability of products and information, efficiency of services and communication, and related industry support etc. [27,40,43]. In particular cases, the substantial factors could include economic strength, the general business environment and strategies, customer demands and market potentials (e.g., China and other Asia Pacific marketplaces), global positioning, industry commitment, government support (e.g., incentive capitals, political stability, and policy-making transparency), accessibility (e.g., transportation), convenience, expenditures, leisure level, corporate community involvement, and corporate green behaviors [3,43,44,49,52].…”

“…The commonly utilized indicators in tourism are mostly related to destination competitive advantages, which have indicated the rankings in attractive destinations and promoted the debate regarding the appropriateness of existing formed destination competitiveness definitions and measurements [20,22,23]. Additionally, the interdependence between a destination and its tourism companies [24], and the strategic business management in tourism and hospitality industries are constantly being valued by scholars [4,[25][26][27]. Nonetheless the current tourism research has not fully explored such indicators that influence the tourism destination business environment [2].…”