Developing a Model for Evaluating the Competitiveness of Serbia as a Tourism Destination – A Tourcomserbia Framework

The competitiveness of tourism destinations is a new phenomenon that has been the topic of much research in recent years. The issue of tourism destination competitiveness evaluation arises from many research studies. Most tourism destinations analyse their competitive position by following the rankings published in the World Economic Forum Tourism & Travel Competitiveness Index (T&TCI – Report published until 2019). Recently T&TCI transformed into Tourism & Travel Development Index (T&TDI), offering a new construct in the model. The World Economic Forum T&TCI and T&TDI model defines the advantages or constraints of a destination position but has certain disadvantages: the limitations in providing quality information to decision-makers with a limited significant link to tourism performance criteria. Beside T&TCI, and T&TDI various indicators and theoretical models have been developed, in different studies, to address specific aspects of tourism destination competitiveness. However, no single model applicable to all destinations exists. Thus, we propose an approach to setting up a model for a particular destination competitiveness evaluation.
This study presents the TOURCOMSERBIA model framework for Serbia’s competitiveness evaluation. TOURCOMSERBIA framework introduces three competitiveness assessments provided by internal and external stakeholders. The proposed model makes foundations for continuous competitiveness evaluation of Serbia and similar destinations and a clear framework and methodology. The proposed framework in this paper is a part of a more comprehensive study on destination competitiveness indicators analysis.