The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2013

Besides the formal educational system, we also take into
account private-sector involvement in upgrading human
resources, including the availability of specialized training
services and the extent of staff training by companies
in the country. The subpillar measuring the availability
of qualified labor further takes into account the extent
to which hiring and firing is impeded by regulations, and
whether labor regulations make it easy or difficult to hire
foreign labor. The health of the workforce is also included
here, as measured by the overall life expectancy of the
country as well as the specific costliness of HIV/AIDS to
businesses.
Also included is the affinity for Travel & Tourism,
which measures the extent to which a country and
society are open to tourism and foreign visitors. It is clear
that the general openness of the population to travel
and to foreign visitors has an important impact on T&T
competitiveness. In particular, we provide a measure of
the national population’s attitude toward foreign travelers;
a measure of the extent to which business leaders are
willing to recommend leisure travel in their countries
to important business contacts; and a measure of
tourism openness (tourism expenditures and receipts
as a percentage of GDP), which provides a sense of the
importance of tourism relative to the country’s overall
size. This year we also introduce an indicator measuring
the extent to which businesses are focused on customer
satisfaction.
It is clear that natural resources are
another important factor underlying national T&T
competitiveness. Countries that are able to offer travelers
access to natural assets clearly have a competitive
advantage. In this pillar we include a number of
environmental attractiveness measures, including the
number of UNESCO natural World Heritage sites, a
measure of the quality of the natural environment, the
richness of the fauna in the country as measured by the
total known species of animals, and the percentage of
nationally protected areas, for which this year we rely on
newly available, more reliable data.
Finally, the cultural resources at each
country’s disposal are another critical driver of T&T
competitiveness around the world. In this pillar we
include the number of UNESCO cultural World Heritage
sites, sports stadium seat capacity, and the number of
international fairs and exhibitions in the country, as well
as a measure of its creative industries exports, which
provides an indication of cultural richness.
These 14 pillars are regrouped into the three
subindexes described above, as shown in Figure 1,
and the overall score for each country is derived as an
unweighted average of the three subindexes. The details
of the composition of the TTCI are shown in Appendix
A; detailed rankings and scores of this year’s Index are
found in Appendix B.
© 2013 World Economic Forum
1.1: The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index 2013
ADJUSTMENTS TO THE TTCI
A few minor adjustments have been made to the TTCI
structure in this edition to ensure that the Index remains
highly relevant:
• Within the Policy rules and regulations pillar (1st),
the indicator Visa requirements (1.04), has been
updated to include the case of electronic visas
(eVisas) alongside the other visa possibilities. This
has become necessary because of the increasing
relevance of the facilitation of visa processes in the
policy debate.
• Within the ICT infrastructure pillar (9th), the indicator
Extent of business Internet use has been replaced
by two more specific indicators. These are ICT use
for business-to-business transactions and ICT use
for business-to-consumer transactions, and are
based on the Executive Opinion Survey. Also, an
indicator measuring Mobile broadband subscriptions
has been added to this pillar. These changes reflect
the growing importance of ICTs for the tourism
industry’s operations as well as their role as tools for
travelers.
• Within the Affinity for Travel & Tourism pillar (12th),
an indicator measuring the Degree of customer
orientation was added because of the importance of
customer satisfaction in the T&T sector.
• Finally, within the Natural resources pillar (13th), the
variables used to compute the extent of Protected
areas have been replaced by the indicators
Terrestrial biome protection and Marine protected
areas. These changes should be regarded as
data improvements, using more sophisticated
and accurate measures, and are in line with the
World Economic Forum’s work on Sustainable
Competitiveness. 1
COUNTRY COVERAGE
Six new economies have been included in the analysis
this year. These include three new African countries
(Seychelles, Guinea, and Sierra Leone); one Middle
Eastern county (Yemen); and two countries in the
Americas (Haiti and Suriname, which was reinstated
after being absent in the last edition because of a lack
of data). On the other hand, five countries covered in
the last Report—Angola, Libya, Syria, Timor-Leste,
and Tunisia—are not covered this year because of
insufficient or unreliable data. Thus this year’s edition
has a net increase in country coverage for a total
of 140 economies this year—one more than in the
2011 Report—covering all of the world’s regions and
accounting for over 98 percent of world GDP.
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