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RESOURCES: PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS

Author : Larry Dwyer & Peter Forsyth
School/Work Place : University of New South Wales, Australia (Larry Dwyer) & Monash University, Australia (Peter Forsyth)
Contact : l.dwyer@unsw.edu.au, peter.forsyth@buseco.monash.edu.au
Year : 2009

Price competitiveness is one of the most important factors in the overall tourism competitiveness of a country or a destination. There is widely accepted evidence that prices are one of the most important factors in decisions about whether, and where, to undertake trips. This is reflected in the Travel &Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI), where, in Pillar 10, Price Competitiveness is assessed using four sets of hard data, on Ticket Taxes and Airport Charges (10.01), National Purchasing Power Parity prices (10.03) Fuel Price levels (10.04) and the Hotel Price Index (10.05).

Not surprisingly, given its importance, many have developed or used indicators of Tourism Price Competitiveness. These indicators vary considerable. It is possible to find indicators based on detailed prices which tourists pay in different countries, along with some highly aggregated and proxy measures. Different indicators shed light on different aspects of competitiveness, and the measures which are most useful for a purpose depend on what questions are being explored. Some of the key aspects which condition which indicators should be used are:

  • The need for accuracy and tourism specific detail versus timeliness. More detailed and accurate measures involve more data collection and processing, and thus they take longer to produce. If timeliness is of essence, it may be necessary to rely on broader proxies for price competitiveness which can be obtained readily.
  • The need for cross country (or cross destination) comparisons of the prices tourists are actually paying. If cross country comparisons of tourism competitiveness at a point of time are required, it is necessary to obtain data on the prices of tourism goods and services in different countries. There are relatively few sources of these data, and they tend to appear with a lag.
  • The need for estimates of changes in relative price competitiveness over time. For some purposes, only the change in relative price competitiveness of countries is needed. If so, changes in the patterns of competitiveness can be estimated using price change data (often obtained from countries’ CPI statistics) and exchange rate data. These are much more easily obtained than actual cross country price comparisons.
  • The need to provide overall summary measures of a country’s price competitiveness at a point of time or changes in it over time. It may be useful to have summary measures which can tell whether, overall, a country’s price competitiveness in tourism has risen or fallen. Such measures require that the detailed measures of price competitiveness be aggregated in some way.

Measures of tourism price competitiveness of countries or destinations (such as individual regions or cities) form part of more general work on destination competitiveness. Destination competitiveness is a general concept that encompasses price differentials coupled with exchange rate movements, productivity levels of various components of the tourist industry and qualitative factors affecting the attractiveness or otherwise of a destination. The development of the Travel & Tourism Competiveness Index allows tourism stakeholders in both the private and public sector to: identify key strengths and weaknesses of their destination from the visitor perspective; highlight opportunities for tourism development; and develop strategies to counter possible threats to future visitation. The focus of this review is country or destination price competitiveness.

In this chapter we outline a range of tourism price competitiveness indicators which have been developed and used. Some are more useful and valuable than others, and all have their advantages and disadvantages. We begin by motivating the review with a discussion of the importance of price as a factor determining competitiveness. We then explore some comprehensive measures of cross country price competitiveness. After this, we note some measures which can be used for examining changes in patterns of competitiveness over time, and patterns of competitiveness in specific sectors. Next we outline some summary measures which can be used to track a country’s or sectors’ competitiveness over time. The determinants of price competitiveness are then briefly reviewed, and the impacts on it of government policy and macroeconomic conditions are briefly discussed. We conclude by putting the measures into perspective with a review of the properties and potential uses of the different measures.


List of Articles
No. Subject Views Datesort
134 Think Tank IX Labour Justice and Sustainable Tourism: The Centrality... file 6990 Oct 13, 2013

What we value is intricately linked to our morality and our ethics, whether personal or corporate. Sustainability is essentially a statement of morality, embedding as it does the notion of inter- and intra-generational equity. This includes,...

Author: Stephanie Chok & Jim Macbeth 

Year: 2009 

133 Think Tank IX Using Social and Political Values to Assess Host Commu... file 3921 Oct 13, 2013

Tourism, like any other endeavour, operates within the social and political domains of a community, and it is therefore likely that residents with different social and political values would hold different representations of tourism. In the ...

Author: Margaret Deery, Leo Jago & Liz Fredline 

Year: 2009 

132 Think Tank IX Values: Dollars, trees or feelings? file 2644 Oct 13, 2013

The importance of values to tourism is but one aspect of the importance of values in human interactions with the natural environment and even more broadly to the human condition. However, attempts to understand the impact of values on behav...

Author: Denise Dillon 

Year: 2009 

» Think Tank IX Tourism Price Competitiveness: a neglected ‘value’ in ... file 3517 Oct 13, 2013

Price competitiveness is one of the most important factors in the overall tourism competitiveness of a country or a destination. There is widely accepted evidence that prices are one of the most important factors in decisions about whether, ...

Author: Larry Dwyer & Peter Forsyth 

Year: 2009 

130 Think Tank IX Valuing water: Perceived differences in attitude and u... file 4950 Oct 13, 2013

The recent explosion of second home development in tourism areas around the world is a reflection not only of the increased mobility of capital and people associated with the effects of globalization but also the development models employed ...

Author: Alison M. Gill, Peter W. Williams & Shelagh Thompson 

Year: 2009 

129 Think Tank IX The role of values in sustaining the hospitality labou... file 6517 Oct 13, 2013

The role of human resources in sustaining hospitality enterprises has long been recognized (Hjalager und Andersen 2001; Baum 2007). Personnel are considered vital for the delivery of touristic experiences, thus being a central ingredient of ...

Author: Anja Hergesell, Ulrike Bauernfeind & Dagmar Lund-Durlacher 

Year: 2009 

128 Think Tank IX The elusiveness of sustainability in tourism: The cult... file 6281 Oct 13, 2013

Sustainable tourism is perhaps the most prominent feature of contemporary tourism discourse. However, despite its prominence for several decades, achieving sustainability remains as elusive as ever. This paper explores the concept of the cu...

Author: Freya Higgins-Desbiolles 

Year: 2009 

127 Think Tank IX Do Chinese tourists find their in-group members more t... file 2125 Oct 13, 2013

Furthermore, social identity theory suggests that people are attracted to others who are familiar to themselves because their similarity reinforces their self-image (Tajfel, 1982), and that people from collectivist culture tend to favour in-...

Author: Rui Jin Hoare, Ken Butcher & Danny O'Brien 

Year: 2009 

126 Think Tank IX Developing a knowledge platform on value of parks for ... file 2885 Oct 13, 2013

National Parks and other protected natural areas are a significant point of focus for tourism activity globally. Consequently it is important to understand the values of parks for tourism to assist with effective policy, planning and manage...

Author: Michael Hughes & Jack Carlsen 

Year: 2009 

125 Think Tank IX De-constructing the Cosmopolitan Gaze file 3188 Oct 13, 2013

Introduction: Nurturing effective intercultural dialogue through tourism has been positioned to be an emergent challenge to tourism professionals working toward sustainability in a globalised world (Robinson and Picard 2006). This interdisci...

Author: Patricia Johnson 

Year: 2009 

124 Think Tank IX Exploring Tourists’ Environmental Learning, Values, an... file 5339 Oct 13, 2013

There is a need for a research agenda, which achieves a holistic understanding of the nature and influences of environmental learning on tourists’ environmental values and travel experiences in relation to climate change. Why, because touri...

Author: Ulrike Kachel & Gayle Jennings 

Year: 2009 

123 Think Tank IX Sustainable Tourism Development Plan for the Old City ... file 8085 Oct 13, 2013

This research aims to propose a sustainable tourism development plan for the City of Nan. Since the year 2000, Nan civil society leaders, national and international stakeholders have tried to develop Nan into a world heritage destination. I...

Author: Donruetai Kovathanakul 

Year: 2009 

122 Think Tank IX Sustainable Tourism Principles Reflected in Award-Winn... file 4292 Oct 13, 2013

There has been increased attention given to sustainable tourism monitoring and evaluation efforts, including corporate policies, guidelines and codes of conduct as well as certification programs (e.g., Dodds and Joppe 2005; Font and Harris ...

Author: Stuart Levy & Donald Hawkins 

Year: 2009 

121 Think Tank IX Valuing Open Innovation Environments in Tourism Educat... file 5822 Oct 13, 2013

The world has changed tremendously since the publication of Our Common Future by the World Commission for Environment and Development (1987), which elevated the concept of sustainable development from grassroots initiatives to the forefront...

Author: Janne Liburd & Anne-Mette Hjalager 

Year: 2009 

120 Think Tank IX Recreation Specialisation and Destination Image: A cas... file 2592 Oct 13, 2013

Papua New Guinea (PNG) should be to Australia what Costa Rica and Belize are to the USA – a proximate and successful tourist destination that attracts sustainable numbers of tourists drawn to the extraordinary diversity of endemic wildlife,...

Author: Kevin Lyons, Kevin Markwell & Patricia Johnson 

Year: 2009 

119 Think Tank IX Achieving Sustainability in Business Events; Challengi... file 3654 Oct 13, 2013

Achieving sustainability is a challenge for all of society, but one that may prove especially problematic for the business events sector. Tourism in general and the business events industry in particular may be even more susceptible than oth...

Author: Judith Mair & Leo Jago 

Year: 2009 

118 Think Tank IX Cross-Cultural Interaction, Capacity Building and Sust... file 10671 Oct 13, 2013

This paper reports on findings which are part of a broader research conducted under the Learning and Teaching Fellowship Award 2007/08, aimed at the assessment of innovative blended learning techniques and applied learning in alternative st...

Author: Marina Novelli 

Year: 2009 

117 Think Tank IX Community based sustainable tourism: Quality of life a... file 8040 Oct 13, 2013

This paper explores the concept of quality of life (QOL) as perceived by residents in tourism destinations and examines differences in perceptions of QOL among culturally different destinations. The perceived QOL of local community is an imp...

Author: Yvette Reisinger & Kwang-Soo Park 

Year: 2009 

116 Think Tank IX Ethical Confusion and Confusion of Ethics: Unpacking t... file 2468 Oct 13, 2013

For many decades authors (see Sontag, 1976, Baederholt, 2006, Chalfern, 1979, Crang, 1997) have recognised the fundamental role of photography within tourism. Many such as Urry (1999, 2002), Crouch (2000, 2002) and Crouch & Lubbren (200...

Author: Caroline Scarles 

Year: 2009 

115 Think Tank IX The Role of Values in Sustainable Tourism Education file 4135 Oct 13, 2013

This presentation discusses the role of values in the context of sustainable tourism education. However, it does not seek to engage in the debate about the definition of Sustainable Tourism nor the differences between this concept and Sustai...

Author: Christian Schott 

Year: 2009 

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