Global competitiveness measurement for the tourism sector

International tourism is expected to be a major vehicle of economic development in industrializing countries in the twenty-first century. Countries with tourism-based economies must develop approaches for employing their comparative advantages to achieve competitive advantages. However, competitiveness in the tourist industry is multi-dimensional and complex. This study proposes that the competitiveness of a tourist destination should be composed of (1) Ricardo's comparative advantages (RCA), including the conditions of natural endowments (exogenous comparative advantages) and the degree of technological change (endogenous comparative advantages); (2) Porter's competitive advantages (PCA), explaining the increase in trade among countries with similar factorial portfolios than in trade pattern determination; (3) tourism management, providing high-quality education and training to enhance RCA and PCA; and (4) environmental conditions, including the domestic and the global environmental conditions. Analytic hierarchy process is employed to weight these evaluation dimensions, elements, and indicators in the proposed tourism competitiveness measuring model, and application discussions are also given.