DESTINATION COMPETITIVENESS IN A TOURIST ROUTE CONTEXT: TOUR OPERATORS’ PERSPECTIVE

To be successful in tourism, destinations must ensure their competitive advantages in national and global markets. While destination competitiveness is a relatively better studied theme in tourism literature, much of the research into it largely focused on conceptualizing destinations at national, regional and local self-contained attraction levels. This study presents an assessment of tourism competitiveness in a tourist route context by examining selected destinations in the Southern Ethiopian Route as a study context. Its objectives were to evaluate the factors that determine destination competitiveness of the route from tour operators’ perspective. Data were collected through structured questionnaire from a comprehensive sample of 117 tour operators. The data, analyzed using hierarchical regression, showed that destination resources, infrastructure and support services, and human related factors were the major determinants of Southern Ethiopian Route’s destination competitiveness. However, situational conditions did not predict the route’s competitiveness in a statistically significant way. The study contributes a conceptual insight to destination competitiveness literature through its examination of tourist routes in the African context from industry practitioners’ perspective. It also offers implications for tourism administrators and marketers in the route to step up efforts to enhance the route’s competitiveness as a destination.