Attributes of Destination Competitiveness: The Case of the Italian Destinations of Excellence

Tourism destination competitiveness has become a crucial issue in today’s more challenging tourism market. The paper extends Richie and Crouch’s (2000) model and develops a set of indicators that considers the different issues concerning tourism competitiveness. The indicators are focused on the various dimensions of sustainability. The aim of the paper is to test whether and to what extent the current set of indicators integrated into the present model can help explaining the competitiveness of a tourist destination. The model is tested on a unique dataset of 610 Italian Destinations of Excellence. Principal Component Analysis is applied on the responses to the items measuring destination competitiveness.