Differentiation in the Tourism Sector: An Evolutionary Analysis

Dolores García and María Tugores
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Dolores García: Grup de Recerca en Indústria i Territori (GRIT), Departament d'Economia, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Avinguda de la Universitat 1, 43204 Reus, Spain
María Tugores: Departament d'Economia Aplicada, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Crta Valldemossa km 7,5, 07122 Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Tourism Economics, 2013, vol. 19, issue 5, 1107-1122

Abstract: The debate on the sustainability of mass tourism development strategies for given destinations has focused to a large degree on the advisability of shifting the pattern of specialization towards higher quality. However, little and limited theoretical analysis exists to support this idea. This paper proposes an evolutionary agent-based model for analysing this topic. Different initial configurations of the distribution of hotel qualities and varied saturation levels in the destination lead to different equilibrium configurations. It is found that high-quality and low-quality segments coexist in most of the simulations. Also, the saturation level of a given destination is crucial in determining the weight of the different quality segments up to a limit or maximum level beyond which a strategy of enhancing quality is no longer effective.

Keywords: tourism competition; hotel differentiation; saturation; evolutionary model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:toueco:v:19:y:2013:i:5:p:1107-1122

DOI: 10.5367/te.2013.0330

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