The Importance of Measuring Sustainability in Reaching Higher Destination Competitiveness

This paper is concerned with appraising sustainability and competitiveness in tourism. Although competitiveness can be assessed according to a range of criteria, there is a common notion that the ability to respond to consumers' requirements leads to the differentiations of destinations on the global market. There is no doubt that consumers look for destinations that take a lead on responsibility - better environmental and social records. Thus, tourism faces self- destruction if it fails to preserve the natural resources and socio-cultural authenticity on which it relies. Tourism needs to be marketed responsively and needs to strive for effective destination management through promoting the participation of private and public sector organizations in the development of tourism strategies. If a destination wants to record improvements in relations to sustainability and competitiveness and find appropriate ways to contribute to overall sustainability, it needs to monitor development. With respect to multidimensional sustainable boundaries, there is a need to develop multiple indicators to measure each dimension of sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to determine to what extent the coastal destination Medulin, Croatia gears to develop sustainable tourism in accordance with the methodology of European Tourism Indicator System for Sustainable Destinations (ETIS-SD). The aim is to concentrate on presenting the results in a way that make them useful to those interested in sustainable tourism development.