Introduction

Competitiveness is a well-established research topic that has been attracting the attention of tourism scholars and industry practitioners for decades. Not too surprisingly, this has resulted in several special issues already, for instance, in Tourism Economics guest-edited by Pashardes and Sinclair (2005) and more recently, by Li and Liu (2022). This special issue aims to explore and deepen the sustainability and resilience links to the discussion of tourism competitiveness. More specifically, it will build upon the extant literature by revisiting the modeling and measurement of tourism competitiveness vis-à-vis changing post-COVID-19 realities and strategies for different types of destinations.

Such contributions are valuable for strengthening both sustainability and resilience of destinations towards any external shocks in the future, thus making them more competitive in the long run. Given its focus, this special issue is of timely importance, especially nowadays in the wake of post-COVID-19 (economic) recovery and the revival of overtourism (societal and environmental) impacts on destinations and host communities. Thus, both positive and negative aspects that may impact the long-term viability and competitiveness of destinations will need to be considered.

As such, this special issue invites theoretical, empirical, and/or methodological contributions that examine the competitiveness of destinations in changing realities, which will undoubtedly result in significant practical insights and implications for destination managers and other stakeholder groups at destinations. To ensure more representative and more in-depth lessons learned, we invite contributions that focus on groups of different types of destinations (e.g., national, regional, urban, rural, etc.) from all over the world. All types of research design are welcome.

List of topic areas

Indicative topic areas include:

1. Modeling and measurement of tourism competitiveness;
2. Efficiency, benchmarking, and competitiveness of destinations (e.g., national, regional, urban, rural, etc.);
3. Tourism demand modeling, forecasting, and competitiveness;
4. Tourism competitiveness and sustainability;
5. Tourism competitiveness and resilience;
6. Impact of cluster initiatives on tourism competitiveness;
7. Impact of innovation and digitalization on tourism competitiveness;
8. Applications of Michael Porter's competitiveness framework to tourism competitiveness.

Guest Editors

Dr. Bozana Zekan,
Modul University Vienna, Austria,
bozana.zekan@modul.ac.at

Dr. Ulrich Gunter,
Modul University Vienna, Austria,
ulrich.gunter@modul.ac.at