Priorization of Public Tourism Policies of a Destination From the Identification of Its Competitive Advantages and Disadvantages: the Case of Extremadura

Abstract

In a tourist scenario where there are more and more destinations that wish to join the national and international tourism markets, competitiveness has become a basic strategic element for these destinations. Only the most competitive tourist destinations will be able to enter and stay in the markets and, therefore, they will be those that could base their economic development, at least partially, on tourism growth. For this reason, it is absolutely necessary that tourist destinations know both their advantages and their competitive disadvantages. The competitive advantages will be those that promote the tourist development of these destinations to a greater degree, while the competitive disadvantages will be the ones that will damage this tourism development. In addition, in the case that there are several advantages as well as competitive disadvantages, it will be necessary to prioritize them according to their greater or lesser contribution to the improvement of tourism competitiveness. The objective of this work is to identify, first, and hierarchize, then, the main competitive advantages and disadvantages of the Extremadura destination in the Spanish tourism market. From data by Spanish regions included in the MoniTur 2014 report (Monitor of Relative Tourist Competitiveness of the Spanish Autonomous Communities), statistical criteria have been used for the identification and ranking of the competitive advantages and disadvantages of Extremadura. The second part of the paper presents some of the actions that should be undertaken by the regional public administration to improve the competitiveness of its tourism sector in the medium and long term.