ABSTRACT
Most studies on tourism destination competitiveness examined the direct relationships of destination attributes and destination competitiveness. Few studies explored the intervening mechanisms between destination attributes and competitiveness. This study selected cities above the "alpha" level in the Globalization and World Cities Research Network rankings as samples to examine the relationship between local demand and urban tourism competitiveness mediated by the quality of place. Results showed that the relationship between urban wealth and tourist arrivals was completely mediated by the quality of place, while the mediating effect was not significant in the relationship between urban wealth and per capita tourism spending, though per capita tourism spending was directly and positively associated with urban wealth. In other words, richer cities had a higher quality of place, and a higher quality of place attracted more tourists but did not increase tourism per capita spending. Furthermore, the study found that there were two opposite influence paths of city size on urban tourism competitiveness. Although urban tourism competitiveness was directly and positively affected by population, the population had a significant negative effect on urban tourism competitiveness mediated by the quality of place. Through the quality of place, we can be aware of the indirect negative effect suppressed by the direct positive effect. This study revealed that the quality of place helped to better understand the competitiveness of urban tourism.
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the determinants of the relationship among Korean outbound tourism demand for Jeju Island and three other Asian island countries using the multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (MGARCH) and Vector Error Correction (VEC) models. It is found that pairwise conditional correlations among tourism demand for Jeju, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines are not constant but time-varying. Estimated conditional correlations among Jeju and the three Asian countries are negative over some time periods. This implies that the three Asian countries are substitutes for Jeju in certain specific time horizons. The VEC model is used to investigate the short-run and long-run dynamic relationships and the results reveal that Industrial Production Index and real exchange rates had the positive or negative impact on conditional correlations of tourism demand for these destinations. Tourism policy implications are discussed for managing tourism demand for these destinations.
