Destination Competitiveness Index

The Destination Competitiveness Index operationalizes the Ritchie-Crouch model, the most influential conceptual framework for understanding why some tourism destinations outperform others. Crouch and Ritchie argued in 1999, and elaborated in their 2003 book The Competitive Destination, that a destination's ability to attract visitors and deliver lasting prosperity depends on a structured set of determinants: core resources and attractors, supporting factors and resources, destination management, destination policy and planning, and qualifying and amplifying determinants that set the ceiling on what is achievable. The index turns this framework into a multi-attribute composite: each destination is scored on attributes within each determinant, the attributes are weighted by importance, and the weighted scores are aggregated into an overall competitiveness score that can be benchmarked against rival destinations to reveal where advantage is won or lost.