Tourism competitiveness measurement. A perspective from Central America and Caribbean destinations

Purpose This study aims to present diverse proposals for the measurement of tourism destination competitiveness that serve as alternatives to the travel and tourism competitiveness index (TTCI). Design/methodology/approach The proposal includes principal component analysis, the DP2-distance method, goal programming, data envelopment analysis and the Borda count. The study evaluates 17 destinations from Central America and the Caribbean. Findings These include the feasibility that the methodologies provide reliable competitiveness rankings and the possibility of using less information due to the strength of the statistical methodologies. International tourist arrivals, income from international tourism and travel and tourism contribution to the gross domestic product could be used as approximations of tourism destination competitiveness. Research limitations/implications The main limitation is the absence of major destinations from the region that constitutes fierce competitors. Practical implications New aggregation methods can build composite indicators for competitiveness measurement and their presentation in a more comprehensible way. Social implications The results serve as an alternative for countries that have yet to be considered in international tourism competitiveness comparisons. Originality/value A better explanatory power of the proposed index is given, thanks to their decomposition capacity and the reduction of the limitations of the original TTCI. Moreover, the proposals facilitate the inclusion of external information or the execution of a completely objective methodology.