Developing a Competitive and Sustainable Destination of the Future: Clusters and Predictors of Successful National-Level Destination Governance across Destination Life-Cycle

Abstract

This study advances the research and methodological approach to measuring and understanding national-level destination competitiveness, sustainability and governance, by creating a model that could be of use for both developing and developed destinations. The study gives a detailed overview of the research field of measuring destination competitiveness and sustainability. It also identifies major predictors of destination competitiveness and sustainability and thereby presents destination researchers and practitioners with a useful list of priority areas, both from a global perspective and from the perspective of other similar destinations. Finally, the study identifies two major types of destination governance with implications for research, policy and practice across the destination life-cycle. The research deals with the analysis of the secondary data from the World Economic Forum Travel and Tourism Index (WEF T&T). Major types of destination governance and predictors of belonging to either one of the types, as well as inside cluster predictors have been extracted through a two-step cluster analysis. The results support the notion that a meaningful model of national-level destination governance needs to take into account different development levels of different destinations. The main limitation of the study is its typology creation approach, as it inevitably leads to simplifications.