Destination Competitiveness and the High Speed Railway in Seville

Abstract

Compared with big cities like Madrid and Barcelona, Seville, as a small city, still lacks competitiveness. This paper aims to enhance the competitiveness and management of tourism destination. It is conducted by analysing Seville's current tourism offering and tourism development, via Ritchie and Crouch's model (2010). The result obtained is that Seville is more reasonable to make a high use of existing facilities rather than create new tourism products, so the High-Speed Railway (HSR) is promoted as a tool to attract tourists from Madrid and Barcelona, considering both the low usage of the HSR and the phenomenon of “over tourism” in big cities. Combined with some incentive strategies, it is practical for increasing the capacity and competitiveness of Seville's tourism development. This paper has not only contributed to making use of the transport facilities to promote the destination tourism development, but also boost the bonds with local destination management organisations (DMO) to meet the mutual benefits, which provides a solution for sustainable development.