Subnational tourism competitiveness performance: the Canary Islands vs. the German Länder

Abstract

The task of measuring the competitiveness of mature destinations, which tend to lose market share in their international markets, is a crucial one. The aim of this paper is to obtain a very detailed view of the competitive position of the Canary Islands in the German market. The special feature of this analysis being that it is performed at a subnational level for both the origin and the destination. More specifically, the analysis combines the federal state (Länder) level and the island level. Starting with the model provided by Ritchie and Crouch for tourism competitiveness, information relating to the habitual place of residence of tourists is sourced and their postcodes are used to perform an analysis of the tourism competitiveness of the Archipelago as a whole, and of each island, in each of the federal states. Differences in tourism competitiveness performance can be used as a powerful information input for destination marketing and management.