The impact of sustainable tourism indicators on destination competitiveness: the European Tourism Indicator System

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2023

Publication Title

Journal of Sustainable Tourism

Keywords

absorptive capacity, competitiveness, Destination management organisations, dynamic capabilities, policy making, sustainable tourism indicators

Abstract

We aimed to evaluate the impact of sustainable tourism indicators on destination competitiveness with reference to the European Tourism Indicator System (ETIS), a scheme funded by the European Commission to address the evidence gap in tourism policy making. To do this, we evaluate the absorptive capacity of destination management organisations (DMOs) to implement and use sustainable tourism indicators to make policy decisions. We provide evidence of how DMOs have acquired knowledge about the importance of sustainable tourism indicators through ETIS, and how they have assimilated it by developing their own systems based on the principles of ETIS. However, we find that the European Commission had unrealistic expectations that DMOs, or their policies, would be transformed as a result of the use of indicators, or that indicators would be exploited to improve tourism sustainability and competitiveness. We contribute to the study of policy science by showing how absorptive capacity can be used to analyse and evaluate policy interventions, despite being a linear rational approach to explaining a complex policy context.

Volume

31

Issue

7

First Page

1608

Last Page

1630

ISSN

09669582

E-ISSN

17477646

DOI

10.1080/09669582.2021.1910281

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