Abstract:The present paper aims to assess the relative attractiveness of competing tourist destinations on the basis of individual visitors' perceptions regarding a holiday destination. Using the feeling of tourist well-being achieved by individual tourists we evaluate indirectly the competitive ability of the tourist area to offer a compound tourist site attractiveness. The methodology employed here uses individual survey questionnaires on the tourists' evaluation of the quality of tourist facilities and attributes in a given area (the „regional tourist profile‟) as the basis for constructing an aggregate expression for the relative attractiveness of that area. Using various multidimensional statistical techniques an estimation of the competitive attractiveness of the Southern regions in Italy is pursued. We also compare our findings with quantitative results on tourist competitiveness values obtained in a related previous study on tourist competitiveness in Italian regions. Finally, the paper highlights the need to use micro and macro data to analyse tourist attractiveness and to identify policies for improving regional tourist competitiveness.
Keywords: Tourist attractiveness; Tourist competitiveness; Resource based view; Multi-attribute utility; Principal component analysis 1. Introduction
Discretionary time consumption has become an important activity for many people in a modern welfare society. As a consequence, the leisure sector has become a prominent economic industry in the Western world. The rise in disposable income and in free time in recent decades has created the foundation for a new lifestyle, where recreation and tourism have become
major elements of consumer behaviour. Today, in many regions and countries, tourism is regarded as one of the major growth industries that deserve due policy attention. Clearly, tourism has become a global socio-economic phenomenon in a mobile world.
The new trend in modern tourism towards non-traditional and remote
destinations is likely an expression of the passage from mass tourism to a new age of tourism, and illustrates a change in the attitudes and needs of many tourists towards tailor-made tourist facilities ([Fayos–Solà, 1996] and [Poon, 1993]). Nowadays, isolated or previously unknown destinations have become places to be explored, since they meet the tourists' expectations: namely, a unique or special leisure experience based on a specific tourist destination profile.
A tourist destination (e.g. city, region or site) is at present often no longer seen as a set of distinct natural, cultural, artistic or environmental resources, but as an overall appealing product available in a certain area: a complex and integrated portfolio of services offered by a destination that supplies a holiday experience which meets the needs of the tourist. A tourist destination thus produces a compound package of tourist services based on its indigenous supply potential. This may also create fierce competition between traditional destinations seeking to maintain and expand their market share and new destinations that are trying to acquire a significant and growing market share. The success of tourist destinations thus depends on their regional tourist competitiveness in terms of the attractiveness characteristics (or quality profile) that make up the tourist strength of a certain area (see also [Agrawal, 1997], [Butler, 1980] and [Hovinen, 2002]).
The dynamic nature of tourist channel competition requires destinations to be able to combine and manage their tourist resources in order to gain
competitive advantage (see Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997). The new needs of
tourists impose destinations constantly to reconfigure, gain, and dispose of attractive resource able to meet the demand of a shifting market. This has led to the concept of dynamic capabilities; viz. organisation's processes (in our case tourist destination) that “integrate, reconfigure, gain and release resources to match and even create market change” (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000: p. 1107).
In the tourist field competition among territorial areas is usually not centred on the single aspects of the tourist product (environmental resources,
transportation, tourism services, hospitality, etc.), but on the tourist destination as an integrated and compound set of tourist facilities for the client ([Buhalis, 2000] and [Ritchie and Crouch, 2000]). As a consequence, destinations have to face the challenge of managing and organizing their scarce resources efficiently in order to supply a holiday experience that must outperform alternative destination experiences on the tourist market. Consequently, in the recent literature the analysis and measurement of tourist destination competitiveness have attracted increasing interest ([Alavi and Yasin, 2000], [Crouch and Ritchie, 1999], [Enright and Newton, 2004], [Kozak, 2002], [Kozak and Rimmington, 1999], [Ritchie and Crouch, 2000] and [Ruhanen, 2007]). Our study seeks to provide an assessment of the relative competitiveness of tourist regions based on an analysis of tourists' judgements – or perceptions – of attractiveness profiles of destination areas. We will apply this approach to micro-based data from the Southern Italian regions.
The paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we describe the rationale and context of our study, where we will use the Crouch and Ritchie (1999) model as our main reference framework. Section 3 is then devoted to a description of the database, while section 4 outlines the statistical methodology employed in this study. Next, in section 5 the empirical results are presented and interpreted. These results will be compared in section 6 with findings from a
previous study by the present authors. Section 7 makes some concluding remarks.
2. The rationale and context of the study
Recent tourism research has highlighted the multifaceted driving forces of modern tourism (see also Matias, Nijkamp, & Neto, 2007). Destination areas are, therefore, challenged to offer a balanced package of those tourist services which all together shape an appealing multidimensional profile for a tourist area. An example of research along these lines can be found in the „magic pentagon‟ of Müller (1994), where attributes such as the visitors' satisfaction, the protection of natural resources, the sustainability of the local culture, and the like play a role in a balanced tourist portfolio.
In our analysis, the multidimensional satisfaction of visitors/tourists is
investigated in a broader setting. In the spirit of the resource based view (RBV) ([Barney, 1991], [Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000], Grant, (2005) and [Wernerfelt, 1984]), we consider tourist areas as set of specific physical, natural, cultural and human resources, which are rare, inimitable and non-substitutable and can generate capabilities which become useful to create and develop competitive advantage (Barney, 1991). The capabilities of a tourist place reflect the ability of a destination to achieve its goals; viz. providing better value to its stakeholders (tourists, residents, firms, etc.) (see Grant, (2005) and [Salaman and Asch, 2003]). 3. Destination branding marketing
Ever since the brand literature commenced in the 1940s (see for example Guest, 1942), there has been consistent recognition that branding offers organisations a means for differentiation in markets crowded with similar offerings ([Aaker, 1991], [Gardner and Levy, 1955], [Keller, 2003] and [Kotler et al., 2007]). For destinations, effective differentiation is critical given the
increasingly competitive nature of tourism markets, where many places offering similar features are becoming substitutable (Pike, 2005). For example, around 70% of international travellers visit only 10 countries, leaving the remainder of national tourism offices (NTOs) competing for 30% of total international arrivals (Morgan, Pritchard, & Pride, 2002). The pursuit of differentiation is explicit in brand definitions, which have most commonly been variations of that proposed by Aaker (1991, p. 7):
A brand is a distinguishing name and/or symbol (such as a logo, trademark, or package design) intended to identify the goods or services of either one seller or a group of sellers, and to differentiate those goods from those of competitors.
However, in the foreword to the first issue of Place Branding and Public Policy, editor Simon Anholt (2004, p. 4) suggested “almost nobody agrees on what, exactly, branding means” in describing place branding practice as akin to the Wild West. There has been a lack of consistency in defining what constitutes destination branding, both within industry and within academia (see [Blain et al., 2005], [Park and Petrick, 2006] and [Tasci and Kozak, 2006]). The most comprehensive definition to date has been that proposed by Blain et al. (2005, p. 337), which followed Berthon, Hulbert, and Pitt's (1999) model of the functions of a brand from both the buyer and seller perspectives: Destination branding is the set of marketing activities that (1) support the creation of a name, symbol, logo, word mark or other graphic that readily identifies and differentiates a destination; that (2) consistently convey the expectation of a memorable travel experience that is uniquely associated with the destination; that (3) serve to consolidate and reinforce the emotional connection between the visitor and the destination; and that (4) reduce consumer search costs and perceived risk. Collectively, these activities serve
to create a destination image that positively influences consumer destination choice.
Branding is therefore considered mutually beneficial from both the supply and demand perspectives. Enhancing the ability of the brand to differentiate effectively can generate advantages for products and services, such as increased purchase intent (Cobb-Walgren, Beal, & Donthu, 1995), lower costs (Keller, 1993), increased sales, price premiums, and customer loyalty ([Aaker, 1991] and [Aaker, 1996]). Advantages for destination marketing organisations (DMO) include increased potential to differentiate against places offering similar benefits, increased destination loyalty and increased yield for stakeholders such as local tourism businesses and travel intermediaries. Benefits for the traveller include ease of decision making through reduced search costs, reduced risk, and possibly enhanced brag value.
The focus of most research reported to date has been concerned with the development of destination brand identities and the implementation of campaigns (see for example, [Crockett and Wood, 1999], [Hall, 1999], [May, 2001] and [Morgan et al., 2002]). One area requiring increased attention is that of tracking the performance of destination brand positions over time. That is, the extent to which destination brands' positioning and repositioning
campaigns have been effective in enhancing brand equity consistent with that intended in the brand identity. This is an important gap, given: i) increasing competition (see Morgan, Pritchard, & Piggot, 2002), ii) the increasing level of investment by destination marketing organisations (DMO) in branding since the 1990s, iii) the complex political nature of DMO brand decision making and increasing accountability to stakeholders (see Pike, 2005), and iv) the long-term nature of repositioning a destination's image in the marketplace (see Gartner & Hunt, 1987). In terms of metrics for DMOs in general, a number of researchers in various parts of the world have pointed to a lack of market
research monitoring effectiveness of destination marketing objectives, such as in Australia (see [Carson et al., 2003] and [Prosser et al., 2000]), North America ([Masberg, 1999] and [Sheehan and Ritchie, 1997]), and Europe (Dolnicar & Schoesser, 2003).
4. Destination branding positioning and The rationale meaning
The aim of this study was to track the brand positions held by a competitive set of near-home destinations between 2003 and 2007. For this purpose the efficacy of a hierarchy of consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) was trialled. CBBE was first promoted by (Aaker, 1991) and (Aaker, 1996) and more recently by (Keller, 1993) and (Keller, 2003) to supplement traditional balance sheet brand equity measures. The rationale underpinning CBBE as a brand performance metric is that consumer perceptions of the brand underpin any financial estimate of future earnings estimated in the financial measure of brand equity. Since a financial balance sheet brand equity measure will be of little practical value to destination marketers, the concept of CBBE is worthy of consideration by DMOs. However, the potential of CBBE for destinations has only recently attracted the attention of academic researchers (see [Boo et al., in press] and [Konecknik and Gartner, 2007]).
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