Tourism Destination Competitiveness: Second Thoughts on the World Economic Forum Reports

Josef A. Mazanec and Amata Ring
Additional contact information
Josef A. Mazanec: Institute for Tourism and Leisure Studies, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Augasse 2–6, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
Amata Ring: BWZ, University of Vienna, Bruenner Strasse 72, A-1210 Vienna, Austria

Tourism Economics, 2011, vol. 17, issue 4, 725-751

Abstract: The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Reports of the World Economic Forum elaborate the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI) as an overall measure of destination competitiveness for 130 economies worldwide. From a tourism management point of view, a measure such as the TTCI is expected to be instrumental in explaining and predicting the tourism performance of receiving countries. This study explores several ways to transform the TTCI into a formative structural model. Partial least squares path modelling, PLS regression, mixture modelling and non-linear covariance-based structural equation modelling are applied to examine the TTCI's predictive power. The analysis probes possible measures for improvement. The destination countries may be subject to unobserved heterogeneity with regard to how the various constituents of competitiveness act on tourism performance. Interaction phenomena seem to prohibit a simple cause–effect pattern and non-linear relationships show encouraging results.

Keywords: destination competitiveness; formative construct; partial least squares; mixture modelling; non-linear structural equation models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5367/te.2011.0065 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:toueco:v:17:y:2011:i:4:p:725-751

DOI: 10.5367/te.2011.0065

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Tourism Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().