Mahmood Ziaee; Ali Delshad; Mohammad Taghi Taghavifard; Abolfazl Tajzadeh Namin
Abstract
The competitiveness of tourist destinations has a good place in the literature and theoretical foundations of tourism studies, however, in the field of research it is full of inconsistencies and contradictions in terms of concept, measurement and legitimacy. The purpose of this study was to provide a ...
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The competitiveness of tourist destinations has a good place in the literature and theoretical foundations of tourism studies, however, in the field of research it is full of inconsistencies and contradictions in terms of concept, measurement and legitimacy. The purpose of this study was to provide a holistic and systematic view of studies in the field of competitiveness of tourism destinations and analysis of previous research in the hierarchy of the scientific paradigm of this field of tourism studies. Therefore, in order to create a deeper understanding of the characteristics, factors and how to measure and improve the competitiveness of tourism destinations, a qualitative meta-analysis method was used to collect and analyze previous researches and Blaikie Triple Index was used to analyze these researches in the hierarchy of the scientific paradigm of tourism competitiveness studies. The results show that in the last two decades, much attention has been paid to the research of tourism destinations competitiveness and to overcome the complexities of this field of tourism studies, researchers have sought to integrate previous models in order to come up with new findings. Other results of this study, which distinguish it from other studies, show that in the hierarchy of the scientific paradigm of this field of tourism studies, 61% of previous studies, after answering the question of what (epistemology), have addressed the issue of why (ontology). Also, a small number of studies related to the competitiveness of tourism destinations (15%) have tried to provide a new model for how to measure the competitiveness of tourist destinations by going through the two levels of what and why (methodology). The final finding of this research is to provide a conceptual framework in which the interaction of factors and variables of competitiveness of tourist destinations with a systemic and holistic perspective is specified.
