Assessment of Regional Attractiveness for Tourism

Abstract

Despite the severe impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry, tourism has become a key sector for economic development in the African continent. Nevertheless, the tourism sector in Africa is still in its early stages and much of its touristic potential remains untapped. To harness this potential, rational and wise tourism planning and management are key. These need to be based on an assessment of the tourism attractiveness of the different territories. In this paper we introduce a method of assessing tourism attractiveness in Africa on a regional level and ways to present the results of such assessments in an easily interpretable way. For these purposes, we calculate a regional tourism attractiveness index and to determine clusters of regions with similar tourism attractiveness profiles. We show how the results of these assessments can be visualized both in static maps and in a web mapping application.