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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
194 Think Tank XI Learning for Sustainable Tourism: Small and Medium Ent... file 4022 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 

193 Think Tank XIII City Slicker to Roo Carer: The Journey of a Wildlife V... file 3998 Nov 06, 2013

The level of interest and participation in voluntourism has progressively become a major sector in contemporary tourism. The notion of combining a novel and pleasurable tourism experience with the fulfillment of contributing a worthwhile cau...

Author: Eunice Tan 

Year: 2013 

192 Think Tank X Agenda 21, the Internet and Globalization – Creating a... file 3998 Oct 13, 2013

This paper discusses the contemporary meeting of three large-scale systems or processes - Agenda 21, the Internet and globalization - and what this historical conjunction means for networking sustainable tourism development. It is important...

Author: Gordon Sillence & Herbert Hamele 

Year: 2010 

191 Think Tank XIX Innovation Generator. Ideas for Sustainable Tourism Pr... file 3970 Oct 23, 2019

Key words: Innovation generator, Sustainable tourism, Alps, projects, Switzerland Page: 208-213 Innovation Generator.pdf Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Norma...

Author: Fabian Weber 

Year: 2019 

190 Think Tank V Analysing the Risk of Drowning at Surf Beaches file 3949 Oct 13, 2013

Surf beach drowning is an example of a tourist injury problem in Australia. In this paper, a process is outlined to identify and tease out the roles and relationships among causal risk factors, markers of risk, and components of risk exposur...

Author: Damian Morgan 

Year: 2005 

189 OPA award Sustainable Tourism on a Mass Tourism Island: An Explo... file 3942 Oct 23, 2019

Key words: sustainable tourism, mass tourism, sustainable urban development, environmental sustainability Page: 86-114 Sustainable Tourism on a Mass Tourism Island.pdf Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ ta...

Author: Kate Devor Leuhusen 

Year: 2019 

188 Think Tank IV Sustainable Tourism and Innovation in Mobile Tourism S... file 3927 Oct 13, 2013

This paper presents a joint public and private sector research project entitled Mobile Digital City and Nature Walks - the development of content and software for a mobile tourism device. Focusing on sustainable tourism, marketing and innova...

Author: Janne J. Liburd 

Year: 2004 

187 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 

186 Think Tank XII Does Migration Have a Bigger Impact on VFR than Total ... file 3912 Nov 06, 2013

As an important global market by purpose of travel, visiting friends and relatives, VFR, is closely associated with the history and development of international migration patterns which are a more permanent form of travel. Further, the impor...

Author: Larry Dwyer, Neelu Seetaram, Peter Forsyth & Brian King 

Year: 2012 

185 Think Tank XVI CSR in Medical Toursim – new markets, new responsibili... file 3896 Jul 02, 2016

Governments, hospitals, clinics and facilitators go about their business of marketing health tourism to international patients and their relatives. While they focus on making money researchers should ask questions about changes raised by th...

Author: Kerstin Heuwinkel 

Year: 2016 

184 Think Tank VII Thematic Analysis of Sustainable Tourism and the Tripl... file 3890 Oct 13, 2013

The relationship between the themes in sustainable tourism publications and the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) was explored in this article. A categorised list of 3719 sustainable tourism articles was thematically analysed to determine the conten...

Author: Michael Hughes & Jack Carlsen 

Year: 2007 

183 Think Tank XII Mobile Learning for Sustainable Tourism Development: T... file 3873 Nov 06, 2013

This paper examines how mobility in higher tourism education may contribute to a dynamic leaning environment capable of integrating transnational and intercultural learning for sustainable tourism development. Central to this is the opening ...

Author: Janne J. Liburd 

Year: 2012 

182 Think Tank XII Slow Travellers - Who Are They, and What Motivates Them? file 3870 Nov 06, 2013

Tourism’s contribution to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is estimated to be around 5% and is forecast to grow rapidly, to around 16% of global emissions by 2020. Future strategies for mitigation must address the levels of demand for t...

Author: Derek Robbins & Jaedong Cho 

Year: 2012 

OPA: 2012 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

181 Think Tank XVIII Sustainable Experience: Innovative sustainable communi... file 3864 Jan 07, 2019

Key words: Customer Experience, Sustainable Marketing, CSR, Communication, Hospitality Management

Author: Annkathrin Weiss & Matthias Straub 

Year: 2018 

180 Think Tank VIII A Framework for Work-Life Balance Practices in the Tou... file 3848 Oct 13, 2013

This paper addresses the key issues surrounding the debate over work-life balance. It provides an overview of current thinking in the general work environment, with specific focus on the issue within the tourism industry. This paper present...

Author: Margaret Deery & Leo Jago 

Year: 2008 

OPA: 2008 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

179 Think Tank XIV Residents' Support for Tourism from the Standpoint of ... file 3789 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 

178 Think Tank X Re-thinking Resort Growth and Governance: An Evolution... file 3780 Oct 13, 2013

Rapid growth in resort areas, combined with environmental and market stresses, has recently created concern amongst resort decision-makers about future paths of development. Growth models have operated effectively in maintaining resort comp...

Author: Alison M. Gill & Peter W. Williams 

Year: 2010 

177 Think Tank XII The Way Forward: Event Management Education and the Fu... file 3778 Nov 06, 2013

The 2011 BESTEN Think Tank XI highlighted a number of issues and themes related to education and learning for sustainable tourism. The themes addressed issues such as learning tools for sustainability, sustainability courses and curricula an...

Author: Olga Junek, Leonie Lockstone-Binney & Martin Robertson 

Year: 2012 

176 Think Tank VIII An Assessment of Efforts to Enhance the Quality of Lif... file 3773 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 

175 Think Tank VI Family Businesses and Sustainable Tourism: the Role of... file 3773 Oct 13, 2013

Family businesses, that is, businesses owned and/or operated my members of a single family, are predominant in Western economies. This is also an important category of business within tourism hospitality, particularly in rural areas where r...

Author: Janne J. Liburd & Jack Carlsen 

Year: 2006 

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