How specialized are coastal tourism destinations in Europe?

This paper assesses the degree of specialization of tourism destinations along European coasts. It presents a European tourism database and a method based on Data Envelopment Analysis for creating an index of tourism specialization that ranks European basins, countries, and regions at the smallest Eurostat geocoding layer. The set of indicators selected respond to the economic logic of the tourism industry within three vectors: Demand, Supply & employment, and Attractions & amenities. Mediterranean and some Northern European destinations have high levels of tourism specialization while others, mostly in Eastern Europe, rank low in the index. This serves to identify some tourism profiles that provide some insights into the potential for tourism development of the European coasts, which may help in the recovery of the sector and in the management of its transition to a green tourism.