Factors Influencing Visitor's Choices of Urban Destinations in North ...

“Tourism, Competitiveness, and Societal Prosperity and the CompetitiveDestination: A Sustainability Perspective”Ritchie and Crouch (1999 and 2000) made a significant contribution to the literature onthis topic by providing the most detailed model of the destination competitiveness. Thismodel was first developed in 1993, but was modified over the years. In 2000, Ritchie andCrouch added another category to the model ‘Destination Policy, Planning andDevelopment’. They felt that it was necessary to emphasize tourism policy as a separatemajor element in the model and to include it in this new category. They stressed theimportance of this category, since the objective of tourism policy is to create anenvironment where “tourism can flourish in an adaptive sustainable manner.” Thecategory “Destination Management” in the earlier model did not incorporate issuesrelated to the tourism policy.Ritchie and Crouch model (2000) includes the following components: Core Resourcesand Attractors; Supporting Factors and Resources; Destination Management; DestinationPolicy, Planning and Development; Qualifying and Amplifying Determinants; andCompetitive Micro and Macro Environment.1. Core Resources and Attractors represent factors that have appeal to tourists. Inparticular, the authors highlight physiography of destination, culture and history,market ties, mix of activities, special events, entertainment, and infrastructure.2. Supporting Factors and Resources provide the necessary foundations for a strongtourism sector. These resources include infrastructure, accessibility, facilitatingresources, hospitality, and enterprise.3. Destination Management includes the resources that shape and influence adestination’s competitive strength. The focus here is on resources stewardship,marketing, finance, venture capital, quality of service, and visitor management.4. Destination Policy, Planning, and Development—the new category in the model—describes the process that seeks to create an environment within which “tourism canflourish in an adaptive manner.” Some of the factors include development,monitoring and evaluation, audit, and philosophy.5. Qualifying and Amplifying Determinants are constraints that influence a destination’scompetitive potential. These constraints are location, interdependencies,safety/security, and awareness/image.6. Competitive Micro Environment comprises the most important stakeholders such asmembers of the travel trade, citizen groups, media, financial institutions, governmentdepartments, etc. As components of the tourism system, these stakeholders shape theimmediate environment within which the destinations must compete.7. Competitive Macro Environment tourism destination is influenced by a globalenvironment and global forces such as economic restructuring, concern forenvironment, shifting demographics, spread of democracy, etc. The destination needsto adapt to these global forces to successfully compete with other destinations.Criticism 24 : This is once again a linear, sequential model with no effort to describepotential interactions between different components of the model.24 Pointed out by Dwyer and Kim (2001).46