Understanding the Concept of Tourism Destinations

A destination constitutes an amalgam of tourism products that are offered and consumed under a brand, the brand of destination. Since the majority of tourism activities take place at destinations, “they can be described a place at which visitor temporarily base themselves to participate in tourism related interactions and activities” (Pike, 2008, p.26). Leiper (1995), cited by Buhalis (2000), defines destinations as places that people choose to stay for a period of time, to take advantage of certain features or characteristics perceived as attractions. For Cooper, Fletcher, Gilbert, Shepherd and Wanhill (1998), the destination is the focus of the facilities and services designed to meet the needs of tourists. And because it is a compound of

In consequence, a destination can be regarded as a combination (or even as a brand) of all products, services and ultimately experiences provided locally. Regardless of ownership of the components, these are rarely linked to one or another supplier, as they represent a collection of people (personal and professional) living in the target area of

Ritchie and Crouch (2000) proposed a composite of 33 indicators organized into five levels of aggregation (supporting factors & resources, core resources & attractions, destination management, destination policy, planning & development and qualifying & amplifying determinants), implemented later by Ritchie, Crouch and Hudson (2001).
Besides its simplicity, competitiveness is not so easy to be measured. In a broad sense, competitiveness is nothing more than the pursuit of superiority in terms of quality, however when trying to measure the competitiveness of a touristic destination (or any other business), one realizes that it is a relative concept (superior to what?) and multidimensional (what are the important attributes to be compared?) (Crouch & Ritchie,