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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 Viewssort Date
234 Think Tank V Effects of SARS Crisis on the Economic Contribution of... file 5936 Oct 13, 2013

In a context of uncertainty over traveller security, tourism experienced two major crises in 2003- the Iraq War and SARS. While the relative impacts of a complex array of impacts on travel decisionmaking are almost impossible to dissect, thi...

Author: Larry Dwyer, Peter Forsyth & Ray Spurr 

Year: 2005 

233 Think Tank XIV Sustainable Tourism Mobility: Recommended Strategies f... file 5955 Jun 26, 2014

Transport is a vital and integral component of the tourism system yet it contributes the most emissions in tourism (Dubois, Peeters, Ceron, & Gössling, 2011; Peeters & Dubois, 2010). In line with the global concerns for sustainabilit...

Author: Diem-Trinh Le-Klähn 

Year: 2014 

232 Think Tank XVIII Community participation and stakeholder engagement in ... file 5959 Jan 07, 2019

Keywords: natural resource management, community participation, stakeholder engagement, co-creation, sustainable tourism, Networks of Reserves.

Author: Umberto Martini, Federica Buffa, Sandra Notaro, Nicola Zeni & Pier Luigi Novi Inverardi 

Year: 2018 

231 Think Tank VIII An Assessment of Efforts to Enhance the Quality of Lif... file 5976 Oct 13, 2013

Quality of life studies are usually either objective or subjective in nature. Objective quality of life studies concentrate on social indicators whereas subjective quality of life studies attempt to assess the perceived satisfaction that in...

Author: Turgut Var, Erhan Ada, Gökce Ozdemir & Deniz Hasirci 

Year: 2008 

230 Think Tank IX Sustainable Tourism Principles Reflected in Award-Winn... file 5988 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 

229 Think Tank XV A modified value chainanalysisoftourism development in... file 5997 Jul 27, 2015

Tourism development in a relatively unknown country is faced with various challenges. The difficulty is not only choosing an appropriate tourism development strategy but also managing it in a complex sociocultural, economic and political env...

Author: Sonja Frommenwiler & Péter Varga 

Year: 2015 

OPA: Runner Up Outstanding Paper Award 

228 Think Tank XI Learning for Sustainable Tourism: Small and Medium Ent... file 6022 Oct 14, 2013

This abstract intends to present QUSS – an integrated Management System for Quality, Sustainability and Safety in theory and practice. QUSS was invented by the NGO Ecocamping and is thus basically applied on camp sites in Europe with focus ...

Author: Tatjana Thimm 

Year: 2011 

227 Think Tank V Ecolabels and Green Globe 21: Awareness and Consumer A... file 6031 Oct 13, 2013

A case in point is New Zealand, where tourism has long been recognised as an important economic force; this is aptly illustrated by the sector’s contribution of 9.6% to the country’s GDP in 2003 (TRCNZ, 2005). The resource at the heart of mu...

Author: Christian Schott 

Year: 2005 

226 Think Tank XIV Residents' Support for Tourism from the Standpoint of ... file 6068 Jun 26, 2014

Therefore, being of a different nature than sustainability pillars, political sustainability (Mihalic et al., 2012) is a requirement for sustainable tourism development (Edgell, DelMastro Allen, Smith & Swanson, 2008; UNWTO, 2004). This ...

Author: Tanja Mihalič, Tina Šegota, Ljubica Knežević Cvelbar, Kir Kuščer 

Year: 2014 

225 Think Tank XIV Hospitality of Sustainable Tourism Encounters: Experie... file 6072 Jun 26, 2014

Global tourism is, at least to some extent, based upon to the vast inequalities between wealthy and impoverished (Cole & Morgan 2010, xv). Neglecting, or actively forgetting, the legacy of colonialism and the modern forms of economic and...

Author: Emily Höckert 

Year: 2014 

224 Think Tank IV A Framework for the Development of Social and Socio-Ec... file 6084 Oct 13, 2013

This paper presents the background thinking to a CRC for Sustainable Tourism project that develops social and socio-economic indicators for tourism communities. The project emanates from the Green Globe 21 Standard that incorporates indicato...

Author: Margaret Deery, Leo Jago & Liz Fredline 

Year: 2004 

223 Think Tank V Managing of Public Risks in Tourism: Towards Sustainab... file 6112 Oct 13, 2013

How to manage risks that endanger development of tourism but that are caused by tourism itself? An industry-based model is presented as an analytic tool and adapted to the situation in tourism. It is argued that development of tourism lacks ...

Author: Yoram Krozer & Else Redzepovic 

Year: 2005 

222 Think Tank XV Lifelong learning for guiding and interpretation file 6142 Jul 27, 2015

Scholarship on guiding and interpretation positions formal training as a central factor in guide instruction. Guide training operates in the area that mediates between personal characteristics, attitudes and knowledge of the guides and what ...

Author: Julia N. Albrecht & Trisha Dwyer 

Year: 2015 

221 Think Tank XVI The impact of CSR activities of family businesses on c... file 6170 Jul 02, 2016

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Author: Zehrer Anita 

Year: 2016 

220 Think Tank XIII Local Residents' Involvement in Rural Tourism: The Cas... file 6207 Nov 06, 2013

Community involvement is regarded as a significant factor for the development of rural tourism. In Malaysia, cooperatives are used as a catalyst to achieve community development through community involvement. This paper focuses on the involv...

Author: Uma Thevi Munikrishnan, Sushila Devi Rajaratnam, Paolo Mura & Vikneswaran Nair 

Year: 2013 

219 Think Tank XIV Local Networks as Sustainable Policy Instruments: A Ca... file 6227 Jun 27, 2014

In this case study, a communication network among local hotel managers was examined, first to assess the extent of communication among hotel managers, and second to identify influential members within the network. Communication with respect ...

Author: Karen Irene Thal & Tracy Burkett 

Year: 2014 

218 Think Tank XII Controlling and Influencing Visitor Flow as a Basis fo... file 6229 Nov 06, 2013

Sustainable tourism at a destination is dependent on the maintenance and good management of its attractive assets. In non-urban areas, the assets will primarily be geological, natural and/or cultural, frequently of a sensitive nature, liable...

Author: David Ward-Perkins & Frédéric Dimanche 

Year: 2012 

217 Think Tank V Framing Tourist Risk in UK Press Accounts of Hurricane... file 6231 Oct 13, 2013

This paper examines the coverage of Hurricane Ivan in the Caribbean published in selected leading UK newspapers in September 2004. Quantitative textual analysis have been utilised in this study to determine the main sources of information on...

Author: Marcella Daye 

Year: 2005 

216 Think Tank IX The West in the East: Conflict in the Values of Volunt... file 6307 Oct 13, 2013

Consequently, the aim of this research was to explore the complexity of trying to work within a framework of sustainability, with a given number of stakeholders (in this case, a UK organisation, its customers (volunteers, primarily British) ...

Author: Angela M. Benson 

Year: 2009 

215 Think Tank IV Evaluating Environmental Initiatives of German Hotels file 6382 Oct 13, 2013

Following a vigorous environmental protection movement trigging in Germany over thirty years ago, the German hotel industry is gradually moving in line with other sections of its society. This study attempts to present a snapshot of the asse...

Author: Joseph S. Chen, Willy Legrand, Philip Sloan & Josephine Zho 

Year: 2004 

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