From tourism demand to destination competitiveness: A spatial spillover perspective

In light of the spatial interdependence between neighbouring destinations in terms of their international tourism demand and the importance of spillovers to destination competitiveness, this study aims to introduce a novel conceptualisation of relative destination competitiveness that moves beyond the traditional isolated approach by explicitly considering the dynamic interplay between competing and complementary destinations and the unique characteristics of each source market. The conceptualisation is operationalised through an advanced spatiotemporal econometric framework with a broader definition of spillovers extracted from each demand system to gauge destination competitiveness relative to both source markets and other destinations in the system. Global and local estimations are performed to extract the destination-level net spillover effects of tourism demand and price, serving as indicators of relative competitiveness. This framework is applied to empirically assess the competitiveness of Asian destinations across various source markets, offering valuable insights into both destination competitiveness and tourism demand.