The impact of sustainable tourism indicators on destination competitiveness: the European Tourism Indicator System

We aimed to evaluate the impact of sustainable tourism indicators on destination competitiveness with reference to the European Tourism Indicator System (ETIS), a scheme funded by the European Commission to address the evidence gap in tourism policy making. To do this, we evaluate the absorptive cap...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Font, Xavier, Torres-Delgado, Anna, Crabolu, Gloria, Palomo, Jesus, Kantenbacher, Joseph, Miller, Graham
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Repositorio:BURJC-Digital. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
OAI Identifier:oai:burjcdigital.urjc.es:10115/26552
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10115/26552
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Destination management organisations
competitiveness
absorptive capacity
sustainable tourism indicators
dynamic capabilities
policy making
Descripción
Sumario:We aimed to evaluate the impact of sustainable tourism indicators on destination competitiveness with reference to the European Tourism Indicator System (ETIS), a scheme funded by the European Commission to address the evidence gap in tourism policy making. To do this, we evaluate the absorptive capacity of destination management organisations (DMOs) to implement and use sustainable tourism indicators to make policy decisions. We provide evidence of how DMOs have acquired knowledge about the importance of sustainable tourism indicators through ETIS, and how they have assimilated it by developing their own systems based on the principles of ETIS. However, we find that the European Commission had unrealistic expectations that DMOs, or their policies, would be transformed as a result of the use of indicators, or that indicators would be exploited to improve tourism sustainability and competitiveness. We contribute to the study of policy science by showing how absorptive capacity can be used to analyse and evaluate policy interventions, despite being a linear rational approach to explaining a complex policy context.