Progress in Tourism Management The attractiveness and competitiveness of tourist destinations: A study of Southern Italian regions Maria Francesca Cracolici a, b, * , Peter Nijkamp b a Department of National Accounting and Analysis of Social Processes, University of Palermo, V.le delle Scienze Ed. 2, 90128 Palermo, Italy b Department of Spatial Economics, VU University Amsterdam, de Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HVAmsterdam, The Netherlands article info Article history: Received 16 February 2007 Accepted 20 July 2008 Keywords: Tourist attractiveness Tourist competitiveness Resource based view Multi-attribute utility Principal component analysis abstract The present paper aims to assess the relative attractiveness of competing tourist destinations on the basis of individual visitors’ perceptions regarding a holiday destination. Using the feeling of tourist well-being achieved by individual tourists we evaluate indirectly the competitive ability of the tourist area to offer a compound tourist site attractiveness. The methodology employed here uses individual survey ques- tionnaires on the tourists’ evaluation of the quality of tourist facilities and attributes in a given area (the ‘regional tourist profile’) as the basis for constructing an aggregate expression for the relative attrac- tiveness of that area. Using various multidimensional statistical techniques an estimation of the competitive attractiveness of the Southern regions in Italy is pursued. We also compare our findings with quantitative results on tourist competitiveness values obtained in a related previous study on tourist competitiveness in Italian regions. Finally, the paper highlights the need to use micro and macro data to analyse tourist attractiveness and to identify policies for improving regional tourist competitiveness. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Discretionary time consumption has become an important activity for many people in a modern welfare society. As a conse- quence, the leisure sector has become a prominent economic industry in the Western world. The rise in disposable income and in free time in recent decades has created the foundation for a new lifestyle, where recreation and tourism have become major elements of consumer behaviour. Today, in many regions and countries, tourism is regarded as one of the major growth indus- tries that deserve due policy attention. Clearly, tourism has become a global socio-economic phenomenon in a mobile world. The new trend in modern tourism towards non-traditional and remote destinations is likely an expression of the passage from mass tourism to a new age of tourism, and illustrates a change in the atti- tudes and needs of many tourists towards tailor-made tourist facili- ties (Fayos–Sola ´ , 1996; Poon, 1993). Nowadays, isolated or previously unknown destinations have become places to be explored, since they meet the tourists’ expectations: namely, a unique or special leisure experience based on a specific tourist destination profile. A tourist destination (e.g. city, region or site) is at present often no longer seen as a set of distinct natural, cultural, artistic or environmental resources, but as an overall appealing product available in a certain area: a complex and integrated portfolio of services offered by a destination that supplies a holiday experience which meets the needs of the tourist. A tourist destination thus produces a compound package of tourist services based on its indigenous supply potential. This may also create fierce competi- tion between traditional destinations seeking to maintain and expand their market share and new destinations that are trying to acquire a significant and growing market share. The success of tourist destinations thus depends on their regional tourist competitiveness in terms of the attractiveness characteristics (or quality profile) that make up the tourist strength of a certain area (see also Agrawal, 1997; Butler, 1980; Hovinen, 2002). The dynamic nature of tourist channel competition requires destinations to be able to combine and manage their tourist resources in order to gain competitive advantage (see Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997). The new needs of tourists impose destinations constantly to reconfigure, gain, and dispose of attractive resource able to meet the demand of a shifting market. This has led to the concept of dynamic capabilities; viz. organisation’s processes (in our case tourist destination) that ‘‘integrate, reconfigure, gain and release resources to match and even create market change’’ (Eisen- hardt & Martin, 2000: p. 1107). * Corresponding author. Department of National Accounting and Analysis of Social Processes, University of Palermo, V.le delle Scienze Ed. 2, 90128 Palermo, Italy. Tel.: þ39 091 6561516; fax: þ39 091 6561501. E-mail addresses: cracolici@unipa.it (M.F. Cracolici), pnijkamp@feweb.vu.nl (P. Nijkamp). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Tourism Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman 0261-5177/$ – see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2008.07.006 Tourism Management 30 (2008) 336–344