Index of destination attractiveness as a tool for destination attractiveness assessment

Abstract

Tourism attractions are widely recognized as the major determinants of the destination competitiveness. Global tourism market is becoming fiercely competitive environment and tourism destinations are under extreme pressure to rejuvenate and to enhance their attractiveness in order to remain competitive. This paper has two main goals. First goal of the paper is to advance existing body of knowledge from the field of destination attractiveness. Second goal is to construct and empirically test methodology for the destination attractiveness assessment. This is achieved through the calculation of index of destination attractiveness (IDA), which is a managerial tool that could be used for quantitative description of destination attractiveness level. This paper presents an example of IDA values calculation for six Croatian seaside counties and for Dubrovnik-Neretva County, located in the southern part of Croatia.