Abstract
The global crisis is still presented and the outlook for the world economy is also fragile. We register a historically low global growth for the second consecutive year. Advanced and large emerging economies are expected to slow in 2013, confirming the conviction that global economy has a weak recovery. As in previous years, growth remains unequally distributed. Emerging and developing countries are growing faster than advanced economies. Despite the compex economic picture, prospects for the Travel & Tourism industry are not entirely gloomy and direct us to a challenging time. According to the World Tourism Organization, international tourist arrivals grew by 4 percent between January and August 2012 compared with the same period in 2011, and total expenditure on tourism has also increased. Competitiveness has become a key-concept employed to approach and describe the sustainable development of the travel and tourism industry. Due to multiple positive effects it generates on the economy and to continuous growth in the last period of time, tourism attracts, each year, new other players. The purpose of this paper is to realise a study of tourism competitiveness among the top 15 most competitive countries from the economic perspective as The Global Competitiveness Report present them. With Pearson correlation coefficient (r), we aim to identify the correlation between tourism competitiveness indicator and the 3 major categories above mentioned, the consistency of these major categories and specific pillars of competitiveness. Analyzing the competitive 15 countries of the world leads us to the conclusion that they are not a homogenous group and there are some differences, strengths and weaknesses distinct from each other.
Keywords
travel and tourism; economic competitivness; travel and tourism competitiveness index; tourism development