Explaining tourism competitiveness in small and medium destinations: the Italian case

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to provide evidence of causal relationships between attributes of competitiveness and tourism destination competitiveness (TDC) in small and medium destinations (SMDs). A model of destination competitiveness has been developed and integrated with attributes of competitiveness, and then applied to a unique dataset of 370 outstanding Italian SMDs. A principal component analysis and a partial least square regression have been performed to test the model. The use of economic and financial measures as dependent variables, in addition to standard measures of destination performance, allows to investigate the concept of TDC from a wider economic point of view. Empirical evidence reveals that the multidimensionality and relativity of the concept of TDC influence the relationships among predictors and dependent variables. Managerial capabilities, quality of services, and policies aimed at fostering local empowerment are found to be key determinants of the competitiveness of Italian outstanding SMDs.

Analysis and Prediction of the Coupling Coordination Relationship between Tourism and Air Environment: Yangtze River Economic Zone in China as Example

“…e CCD can be measured so that an aggregated evaluation index system is constructed to measure the mutual effects of tourism and air environment. is study firstly selects indicators of the tourism-air environment system according to previous research studies [1,14,17,26,54,[56][57][58][59][60][61][62]. e selection and screening criteria include (1) covering and representing the components of tourism and air environment, (2) selecting the indices which are commonly referred and cited, (3) selecting the relatively simple and clear indicators in order to promote the effectiveness of collecting data and to enhance the index system dissemination and to eliminate multicollinearity, (4) reflecting the strategies or policies from the authorities, and (5) considering the accessibility of data [17,58].…”

“…In the tourism subsystem, the dimension of Tourism Scale represents the integral size of the tourism industry, including the number of domestic tourists, the number of international tourists, the number of hotels, the number of travel agencies, and the number of employees of the tourism industry [1,26,[58][59][60][61]; the dimension of Tourism Performance reflects the benefits and monetary status of the tourism industry, including earnings from domestic tourists and from international tourists [26,[58][59][60].…”

Modelling international monthly tourism demand at the micro destination level with climate indicators and web-traffic data

“…Fragmentation of the tourism product (Haugland et al, 2011) and heterogeneity of local suppliers (Sainaghi & Baggio, 2014) are two relevant characteristics of the tourism industry, especially in countries like Italy where the diversification of tourism experiences is very high, as the local communities and their territories (physically and culturally) are usually an essential part of the visitor experience (Goffi & Cucculelli, 2018;Presenza et. al., 2013;OECD, 2011).…”

Determining the Competitiveness Level and Competitivity Factors of the Thermal Health Tourism Sector of South Egean Thermal Tourism Development Region

“…According to the confirmatory factor analysis results; the included in the group of countries with low tourism competitiveness (Nazmfar et al, 2019). In another study conducted to determine the competitiveness characteristics in small and medium destinations and the causal relationships between tourism destination competitiveness, it was seen that managerial capabilities and service quality and policies aimed at promoting local empowerment were the main determinants of the competitiveness of the Italian small and medium-sized destinations (Goffi and Cucculelli, 2018).…”