Resources

RESOURCES


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 XIV Current Global Initiatives to Address the Sustainabili... file 5096 Jul 07, 2014

A number of ongoing and new initiatives aim at the tourism sector with the intention of improving sustainability within the sector and through tourism in other economic and social activities. Dirk's presentation reflects on UNWTO’s position ...

Author: Dirk Glaesser 

Year: 2014 

133 Think Tank XV A novel review approach on adventure tourism scholarship file 1585 Jul 24, 2015

As a niche market, adventure tourism has been developing rapidly in many regions and territories, evidenced by increasing number of participants and intensive growth of adventure tourism products (Adventure Travel Trade Association, 2013; T...

Author: Mingming Chen, Deborah Edward, Simon Darcy 

Year: 2015 

132 OPA award Active community participation in nature conservation ... file 3560 Jul 27, 2015

This paper provides a conceptual framework of community- based nature conservation and tourism (CBC-T). The following themes are guiding discussions in this study, i.e.: land rights of local communities in and around protected areas; communi...

Author: Jones Muzirambi & Kevin Mearns 

Year: 2015 

OPA: 2015 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

131 Think Tank XV Enhancing stakeholders’ participation for sustainable ... file 2109 Jul 27, 2015

Tourism is a fragile industry with multiple stakeholders. Globally, the desire of its stakeholders is to gain more benefits and eliminate negative impacts on resources that support the industry, particularly in protected areas (PAs) such as ...

Author: Richie Wandwi 

Year: 2015 

130 Think Tank XV Deconstruction of Man-nature Dialogue Nexus: A Critica... file 8824 Jul 27, 2015

The relationship between man and nature dates back to the millennia. The intimacy of man-nature interaction increased with decreasing healthy nature, as man’s insatiable desire to know and control nature as a commodity becomes more dynamical...

Author: Michael Kweku Commeh 

Year: 2015 

129 Think Tank XV Protected areas and community wildlife-based tourism i... file 809 Jul 27, 2015

Tourism planning in protected areas (PAs) entails addressing two partly competing and overlapping goals: preserving heritage and providing access. Resolving potential conflicts between these two goals is particularly challenging at the inter...

Author: MorenTibabo Stone & Gyan P. Nyaupane 

Year: 2015 

128 Think Tank XV Why Africans do not visit their national parks: A case... file 1630 Jul 27, 2015

Present-day Western approaches relating to nature and natural resources management assume that humans are independent from the natural world (Pierotti & Wildcat, 2000). Protected areas such as Yellowstone National Park were created with ...

Author: Lesego S. Stone & Gyan P. Nyaupane 

Year: 2015 

127 Think Tank XV Social Representations of Tourist Selfies: New Challen... file 2840 Jul 27, 2015

A number of recent incidents have focussed media attention on the phenomenon of tourist selfies, described their negative consequences for tourist destinations and identified a number of challenges for tourist site managers. This paper repor...

Author: John Pearce & Gianna Moscardo 

Year: 2015 

126 Think Tank XV Rural renewal or requiem? Establishing new creative ve... file 1114 Jul 27, 2015

During the past decades, concern for rural poverty and underdevelopment of the rural communities of Namibia has been central to government development efforts. This has further given rise to several rural development programmes. While, some ...

Author: Erling Kavita 

Year: 2015 

125 Think Tank XV Perceptions of local communities participation in rura... file 2877 Jul 27, 2015

In order to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs, rural communities should be able to participate actively in all aspects of tourism, including planning and management. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the local communit...

Author: Limpho Lekaota & Jarkko Saarined 

Year: 2015 

124 Think Tank XV A modified value chainanalysisoftourism development in... file 3133 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 

123 Think Tank XV Environmental Practices and Hotels’ Performance: an em... file 1578 Jul 27, 2015

Firms are nowadays facing growing pressure from governments and environmental institutions to reduce their ecological footprint. While a growing number of empirical studies have examined the impact of green management policies on firms’ fina...

Author: Christelle Cortese & Mondher Sahli 

Year: 2015 

122 Think Tank XV The operational challenges of community-based tourism ... file 12099 Jul 27, 2015

Community-based tourism is increasingly being developed and promoted as a means of reducing poverty in developing countries assisting local communities to meet their needs through the offering of a tourism product. The Swaziland Tourism Auth...

Author: S. E. Lukhele & K. F. Mearns 

Year: 2015 

121 Think Tank XV The social enterprise as a vehicle to poverty alleviat... file 1848 Jul 27, 2015

Over the last decades, social enterprises have increasingly gained importance in the travel and tourism industry and they are revolutionizing the way business is done. Instead of maximizing profits for external shareholders, a social enterpr...

Author: Sebastian Ferrari & Dagmar Lund-Durlacher 

Year: 2015 

120 Think Tank XV Perceptions of the business community on the sustainab... file 7241 Jul 27, 2015

The holiday property market has seen a genuine boom in the last years with second homes being an integral part of today’s tourism and an important pillar in the accommodation sector. Today second homes are seen as an enabler for destination ...

Author: Anita Zehrer 

Year: 2015 

119 Think Tank XV Conserving biodiversity as tourism (including wildlife... 3266 Jul 27, 2015

Governments throughout Australia and elsewhere recognise that tourism is an important sector of the economy, and are encouraging its growth in a variety of ways, some more environmentally sound than others. This papers presents not the resul...

Author: Ronda J Green 

Year: 2015 

118 Think Tank XV Luxury and Sustainability in Tourism Accommodation – a... file 3289 Jul 27, 2015

This paper examines the relationship between luxury and sustainability in tourism using a case study of the Soneva Group, which has two luxurious eco resorts in Maldives and Thailand. The aim of this paper is to determine whether luxury and ...

Author: Derek Robbins & Justyna Gaczorek 

Year: 2015 

117 Think Tank XV The role of souvenir vendors in the cultural sustainab... file 2757 Jul 27, 2015

The research investigated the role of souvenir vendors in sustaining the social-cultural authenticity of Chichen Itza’s host community, a Mexican UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) (UNESCO, 2015a). The case study evaluated the Maya-descent ven...

Author: Ady Milman 

Year: 2015 

116 Think Tank XV Can we eat it? Exploring the cultural challenges in ma... file 2848 Jul 27, 2015

Can we eat it? How did you stop the waves? Is there water in there? Where is the switch to turn it off? Will it eat me? These are just some of the many questions asked by visitors to uShaka Sea World in Durban, South Africa. While South Afri...

Author: Judy Mann & Roy Ballantyne & Jan Packer 

Year: 2015 

115 Think Tank XV Lifelong learning for guiding and interpretation file 2971 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 

AAA