The World Economic Forum announced its Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2009 will be released on March 4. A couple of weeks ago I was asking people where to find better data that could be used to identify emerging destinations and based on the 2008 version of the report, this may be the best source.
The report provides details on a number of factors that combined make it attractive to develop the Travel & Tourism sector. These factors are:
- Policy rules and regulations
- Environemental sustainability
- Safety and security
- Health and hygiene
- Prioritization of Travel & Tourism
- Air transport infrastructure
- Ground transport infrastructure
- Tourism infrastructure
- ICT infrastructure
- Price competitiveness in the Travel & Tourism industry
- Human resources
- Affinity for Travel & Tourism
- Natural resources
- Cultural resources
In 2008, through the methodic evaluation of these factors, countries like Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Australia & Spain were at the top of the rank. However, with the abundance of details provided by this report the one thing that comes to mind as an important deficiency is the fact that only country level data is provided. Well, for a report of this scope is absolutely necessary to maintain this general approach. But I’m certain that the more granular this information is provided, the more valuable it will become. Within countries, specific regions may be investing far more resources to get ahead of the game. Identifying the qualities that these regions have to compete and using such information to publish a regional version of the report may be the first step in creating new tourism trends.
