Developing an Evaluation Model for Monitoring Country-Based Tourism Competitiveness

Abstract

Using pillars and sub-index from the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (T & TCI) to measure a destination’s competitiveness is popular. Still, its methodology underlying the calculation has been criticized. So the T&TCI Index has not been regarded as a reliable measure of a destination’s competitiveness. In this regard, this paper sought to set out a country-based tourism competitiveness evaluation model with various statistical methods to indicate how important tourism policy development has to design. We used data from an expert survey to examine the attributes and sub-attributes and shape the decision-making. We addressed a theoretical six-step procedure to ensure the evaluation model’s rigor in the model development context. The first was to do data collection. The second was to examine construct underrepresentation. The third was to examine common method bias. The fourth was to examine construct-irrelevant variances. The fifth was to evaluate intergroup consistency. And the sixth was to develop attribute weight. Our study showed that a country-based tourism competitiveness evaluation model encompassed 8 attributes and 28 sub-attributes. We identified cultural uniqueness, ecology and the environment as the two most important attributes. In the end, we addressed the practical contributions of this study and methods to policy-makers and researchers.