Tourism Competitiveness in Eastern Africa: RCA and TTCI

Abstract

Eastern Africa is home to strikingly beautiful landscapes, unique wildlife and exotic cultural heritage that create outstanding tourism appeal. Unfortunately, these attractive features do not always translate to high tourism revenues. This paper focuses on analyzing the relationships between tourism performance indicators—arrivals, revenues and the revenue-based revealed comparative advantage (RCA)—and compare them to the components of destination facilities and endowments measured by the Tourism and Travel Competitiveness Index (TTCI). The analysis concentrates on Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, using secondary data from 2005 to 2017. The methodology applies correlation analysis and panel regression. As the results show, the TTCI and RCA are negatively correlated, but the components of the TTCI have different relationships to the RCA. Natural heritage positively influences the RCA, while cultural resources do not. The higher RCA values are also enhanced by better tourism services and better ground travel infrastructure. Similar analyses have been performed for Europe and some Asian countries, but not for Eastern Africa. The novelty of the present research is the fact that natural heritage resources can contribute considerably to tourism revenues, while cultural resources are not utilized to their full potential in terms of tourism success.

Impacts of Weather Variability on the International Tourism Receipts—Evidence from Ethiopia (1995–2019)

“…The QF i factor comprises many relevant features of the destination area, such as its demographic traits, level of urbanization, seasonal events, marketing expenditures, and destination attractiveness, including climate, culture, history, natural environment, political stability, and safety. This is reflected by the travel and tourism competitiveness index (TTCI), which includes the core components of a country's appeal based on 14 pillars: business environment; safety and security; health and hygiene; human resources; ICT infrastructure and ICT readiness; prioritization of travel and tourism; international openness; price competitiveness; environmental sustainability; air travel infrastructure; ground travel infrastructure; tourism services infrastructure; natural resources; and cultural resources [90,91]. Although the majority of tourism demand studies focus on economic factors [78,92], among the destination characteristics, the inclusion of natural endowments is a reasonable choice.…”

“…Security and safety, including political stability, are also a relevant factor influencing tourism demand [90,91,96]. The negative impact of political instability on international tourism arrivals and receipts is a generally accepted fact [87,88,97].…”

Digital Marketing Strategies and Performance of Tour Operators Supply Chain in the Tourism Industry

“…(United Republic of Tanzania (URT), 2022). This raises the need for more efforts to promote tourism effectively utilizing digital marketing strategies to improve the performance of tour operators' supply chains by attracting more visitors, increasing sales, and improving profits (Bacsi et al, 2023).…”