African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure (Feb 2019)
An Analysis of Destination Attributes to Enhance Tourism Competitiveness in Bangladesh.
Abstract
Tourism destination competitiveness (TDC) has become an important research topic and has received considerable attention from many researchers. However, according to the authors, no study has yet been conducted to measure the perception of the supply-side stakeholders concerning the TDC of Bangladesh. The purpose of this study is to measure the perceived destination competitiveness by identifying the attributes appropriate to Bangladesh. The defined attributes were empirically inspected by importance performance analysis (IPA) tool through primary data from 303 practitioners. A stratified sampling method was used in this regard. The IPA findings reveal there are only a few attributes like physiography and climate, hospitality, geographic location, and cuisine in which Bangladesh tourism is performing well against its major perceived competitive destinations like India, Malaysia, Nepal, and Thailand. However, having important destination attributes mainly from nature, destination Bangladesh is still behind its perceived competitors. This research creates the value of accepting a destination’s competitiveness attributes that advances destination theory. The findings offer significant implications for Bangladeshi policymakers for developing a strategic marketing plan and identifying priorities for resource allocation in tourism. The study concludes with mentioning few limitations while highlighting areas for further research aimed at developing a tourism destination competitiveness (TDC) model for destination Bangladesh.
