FACTORS WHICH STRATEGICALLY EXPLAIN THE COMPETITIVENESS OF A TOURISM DESTINATION: EVIDENCE FROM SINGAPORE AND SRI LANKA

Globally tourism industry has experienced rapid growth in the last 25 years, a trend predicted to continue in future and as such, the field of tourism has emerged as an area of theoretical and practical interest. Although the competition among countries engaged in tourism has increased, the world travel and tourism competitive index (TTCI) reveals striking disparities among developed and developing countries as tourism destinations. This paper is an attempt to examine the elementary reasons for such disparity through identification of competitive factors which strategically explain the position and competitiveness of a tourism destination. For clarity and better understanding the study was conducted with evidence from Singapore and Sri Lanka. Data collection was carried out adopting a survey instrument with purposive sampling and structured questionnaire to examine fifteen factors illustrating tourism destination competitiveness based on responses received from the two countries 70 from Singapore and 66 from Sri Lanka. The analyzed data were used in a model of strategic evaluation of tourism destination to diagnose the strengths, weaknesses as well as the competitive opportunities of the two countries through the review of 15 competitive factors. The results strategically explained the competitive positions of both tourism destinations, while findings on factors provided guidelines to achieve greater destination competitiveness. Further, the model of strategic evaluation first tested in Spain for tourism destination competitiveness, was extended for pertinence in other tourism destinations and situations.


INTRODUCTION
While tourism generates a significant amount of foreign exchange earnings that also contribute to the economic growth of developed countries, such ingredient of growth has not been effectively harnessed by most of the developing nations.The world travel and tourism destination rankings of 2015 highlight this fact with developed countries occupying most of the top positions including the top 10 while developing nations are behind in the ranking list of 141 countries (TTCR, 2015).
This leads to the question 'why many developing countries with bio diversity, strong culture, historical artifacts and abundance of natural resources are lagging behind in destination competitiveness?', especially in comparison to developed nations which sometimes have limited natural or inherited resources.The answer to this question exposes the fact that unlike many commercial products, in tourism a destination delivers an "experience" to its visitors and the inherited resources only will no longer create that experience; instead, a destination's competitiveness will be determined by how the inherited resources are effectively integrated through efficient management of the tourism supply chain (Fernando & Long, 2012).
Rodriguez-Diaz & Espino-Rodriguez ( 2008) successfully used a model of strategic evaluation based on internal and relational capabilities to study the factors defining the tourism competitiveness of Gran Canaria in Spain; The two scholars further said, 'Moreover, future research should validate the model in other destinations and circumstances'(p.379).
The study tested this model of strategic evaluation of tourism destination in a developed and a developing country -Singapore and Sri Lanka respectively.In travel and tourism destination rankings, Singapore is 11th while Sri Lanka occupies the 63rd position; Regionally, Singapore is number one and Sri Lanka is number six out of a total of 15 south-east and southern Asian countries (TTCR, 2015).The objective of the study is to explain the different competitive positions of Singapore and Sri Lanka in tourism by identifying the country strengths and weaknesses in terms of factors defining tourism destination competitiveness.
By testing the validity of the model in two destinations with contrasting economies, the study contributes to expand the existing theoretical knowledge.On the other hand, the findings help the tourism authorities of the two countries to identify the factors that need special focus and attention to make their destinations more competitive, which can guide the shaping of their tourism strategies.
The introduction is followed by literature review in section 2 and research methodology in section 3. Data analysis, results and findings are presented in Section 4, while section 5 is the conclusion.Section 6 discusses study limitations and directions for future research.

LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Tourism destination competitiveness
The competitiveness of a destination depends on its ability to offer goods and services to outperform other destinations (Dwyer & Kim, 2003).In tourism industry, according to Dupeyras & MacCallum (2013, p 14), "Tourism competitiveness for a destination is about the ability of the place to optimize its attractiveness for residents and non-residents, to deliver quality, innovative, and attractive (e.g.providing good value for money) tourism services to consumers and to gain market shares on the domestic and global market places, while ensuring that the available resources supporting tourism are used efficiently and in a sustainable way".

Tourism supply chain management
The importance of supply chain management in tourism destination competitiveness is evident from the above definition, as the objective of supply chain management is to maximize profits by increasing competitiveness through reduced costs and increased service levels (Crompton, 2009).In general a supply chain includes all parties who will work together directly or indirectly to ensure customer demand level satisfaction (Chopra & Meindl, 2013) and supply chain management combines a number of business functions such as logistics, purchasing, operations and distribution (Johnsen, Howard & Miemczyk, 2014).In tourism, it involves combining and integrating different sectors, firms and stakeholders which includes tourism enterprises like hotels, restaurants, tour operators and transporters, supporting industries in entertainment, sports and shopping as well as both public and private sector destination management organizations (Fernando & Long, 2012).Therefore, the tourism supply chain management can be described as the ability to efficiently integrate all such sectors and functions to satisfy the tourist needs by meeting their service levels at reduced costs, leading to maximized profits through increased market share.

Destination competitiveness and tourism supply chain management
In tourism, the competition is not between companies but by supply chains (Christopher 2005) and if the tourism supply chain functions more efficiently and effectively with higher volume of business, the tourism destination will be more competitive (Rodriguez-Diaz & Espino-Rodriguez, 2008).So the tourism destination competitiveness can also be viewed as how a destination uses its available resources in an innovative way using tourism supply chain management.

Destination competitive models
Based on this understanding, over the last two decades, many scholars have worked on several destination competitive models on different settings (Khin, Daengbuppha &Nonsiri, 2014), with almost all the models centered around tourism supply chain with due consideration for other factors which include economic, social and political forces.

4.Validity and reliability
Validity is the accuracy of measures or the extent which truthfully represents a concept (Zikmund, Babin, Carr, & Griffin, 2010) and by using literature review and expert opinion for identifying the 15 factors used in the study for defining the tourism destination competitiveness of Singapore and Sri Lanka, the authors have ensured the face validity of the data.
Reliability represents the internal consistency or the extent to which the sample patterns of responses to items are consistent or repeatable across items (Helms, 2006) and Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient was used as the measure to test the reliability, with usual reliability range between 0 and 1 and higher values of Cronbach's alpha meaning good internal consistency of the items in the scale (Gliem & Gliem, 2003).
The Cronbach's alpha values of ISV and RSV for all 15 factors related to Singapore and Sri Lanka are higher than 0.70 as shown in Table 2, indicating reliability and internal consistency is within the acceptable range (Bryman & Bell, 2007).

DATA ANALYSIS, RESULTS AND FINDINGS
To facilitate the use of the strategic evaluation model, the average values for the 15 factors were calculated under each of the 6 questions from the collected data.Then the internal strategic value (ISV) for each factor was determined by calculating the relevant mean value of question numbers 1 to 4, which addressed the factors in terms of importance(Q1), non-substitutability(Q2), benefits(Q3) and contribution for improved competitiveness(Q4).Similarly, relational strategic value (RSV) for each factor was determined by calculating the mean from question numbers 5 and 6, covering integration(Q5) and sustainability(Q6).
SPSS 22 was used for data analysis and Table 3 and Table 4 display the results of mean values and standard deviations (SD) related to each of the 15 factors with reference to Singapore and Sri Lanka respectively.

Table 3 Mean & SD values of ISV and RSV for the Destination Competitiveness Factors in Singapore Table 4 Mean & SD values of ISV and RSV for the Destination Competitiveness Factors in Sri Lanka
With the objective of dividing the survey data into as many boxes as in the model of strategic e valuation of tourism destination, percentile calculations were used to identify the values 3 and 5 to separate the data range of 1 to 7 into three groups.Then the calculated means of ISV and RSV for the 15 factors were used in the model to strategically evaluate their competitive positions in defining the tourism competitiveness of Singapore and Sri Lanka.(Refer Figure 2)

FACTORS WHICH STRATEGICALLY EXPLAIN THE COMPETITIVENESS OF A TOURISM DESTINATION: EVIDENCE FROM SINGAPORE AND SRI LANKA
The strategic analysis of Figure 2 shows that Singapore is positioned on the main diagonal in strong equilibrium having seven factors in box A as strengths, six in box B as competitive opportunities and only two off the diagonal; In contrast, Sri Lanka is in imbalanced position on the diagonal with no strengths and having three factors as unexploited opportunities in box B, eight as weaknesses in box C while four are off the diagonal.Therefore these results from the model of strategic evaluation of tourism destination provides sound explanation as to why Singapore is a top performing and high ranked tourism destination in comparison to Sri Lanka.

Figure 2 Strategic Evaluation of the 15 Factors Defining the Tourism Destination
Competitiveness of Singapore and Sri Lanka For further discussion and comparison, the strategic evaluation results of the 15 factors related to Singapore and Sri Lanka are summarized in Table 5.
In Table 5, the seven factors shown in box A are the core competence of destination for Singapore and the tourism authorities should continuously reinforce these strengths to ensure that they do not lose the internal and strategic value of these factors.The six factors in box B have medium strategic values representing competitive opportunities and indicating unrealized potential.Strategically identifying the right factors in box B to pursue as strengths and developing actions to move them should be considered a priority.From the two factors outside the diagonal, direct sales could potentially be moved to a position of core competence with a focused strategy aimed at improving internal vision and generating synergies.Due to its limited natural resources, Singapore possibly may not be considering geographical factor as an internal strength, but has compensated for it with high relational value, which probably explains the off diagonal position of this factor.

Table 5 Summary of Destination Competitiveness Factor Comparison between Singapore and Sri Lanka
The lack of factors in box A indicates a relative weak position in destination competitiveness for Sri Lanka.The tourism authorities in the country should first concentrate on the three competitive opportunity factors in box B with stable plans to reposition them as core competence of the destination.Having as many as eight factors in box C as weaknesses and four others outside the diagonal suggest the need for a clear strategic direction for the tourism industry in Sri Lanka.Such direction should provide strategic actions and single out three to four factors to recalibrate as destination strengths while converting most of the remaining factors to a position of medium strategic value in box B. Identification of right factors should be done with the view that factors defining competitiveness in tourism may vary depending on the destination and targeted market segments (Enright & Newton, 2005).Further, the high IRV's of geographical and socio-cultural factors in comparison to RSV's explain the country dependency on natural and cultural resources for competitive advantage.
The comparison of RSV's show that Singapore has ten factors with high value and five with medium value while Sri Lanka has just the opposite, with five factors of medium value and ten factors of low value.This indicates a very strong comparative position of Singapore in terms of relational capabilities covering integration and sustainability of the tourism supply chain.This position of strength is evident through the competitiveness factor 'tourism supply chain innovations' -where Singapore has it as a strength in box A while for Sri Lanka it is in the weak zone of box C.

CONCLUSION
The empirical study of the factors defining the tourism destination competitiveness of Singapore and Sri Lanka shows that the model of strategic evaluation of tourism destination produces results which represent and explain the competitive reality of the two destinations.Hence the study contributes to the existing theory by extending the applicability of the model not only to a different region, but also to two different economies -one developed and the other developing.
The model also evaluated the factors based on internal and relational strategic values, which clearly identified the strengths, weaknesses and competitive opportunities for each destination which can guide the relevant tourism authorities of the two countries to take specific steps to improve their country competitive positions.
Finally, the successful application of the model for comparative analysis of two competitor destinations with different economic conditions helps to identify the fundamental lines of action to achieve greater competitiveness in tourism, which can be of more importance and value especially for countries with emerging economies.

FUTURE RESEARCH
The study was conducted with data collected from higher level respondents identified through purposive sampling, concentrating on strategic level factors defining the tourism destination competitiveness.This can be viewed as a limitation, since the findings may lack the operational level applicability to achieve tourism destination competitiveness.The future researchers can conduct a detailed study using the same model to evaluate operational attributes relevant to each of the strategic competitive factors and by involving wider cross section of respondents representing various operational levels of the tourism industry.Alternatively, this study can be extended to combine the operational attributes related to strategic factors which were identified as areas for more focus and special attention in Singapore and Sri Lanka.It will be also interesting to see how the model functions and performs in comparison studies between two developed nations as well as two developing nations, which can lead to some new insights.Further, the knowledge of this research can be extended to study the tourism competitive strategy of a destination.
Finally, tourism supply chain management and tourism supply chain innovations which showed a marked difference between Singapore and Sri Lanka opens up a completely new research area to explore in tourism and destination competitiveness studies.

FACTORS
WHICH STRATEGICALLY EXPLAIN THE COMPETITIVENESS OF A TOURISM DESTINATION: EVIDENCE FROM SINGAPORE AND SRI LANKA Hassan (2000) suggested a destination competitive model comprising of comparative advantage, demand condition, industry structure and environment commitment indicators, examining the relationships among stakeholders.Heath (2002) established a model emphasizing people as key success drivers and communication and information as vital linkages.Dwyer & Kim's (2003) integrated model consists of six key elements -inherited resources, created resources, supporting resources, situational conditions, destination management and demand conditions.Demand condition here means traveller motivation comprising tourists' perception, awareness and destination image, in contrast to Hassan (2000), where demand condition is the ability of destination to respond to changing nature of market demand.Fernando & Long (2012) further developed the Dwyer and Kim (2003) model and proposed a new conceptual model by including innovation perspective and focus.The model developed by Ritchie & Crouch (2003), known as Calgary model is based on a destination's comparative advantage through inherited resources and its competitive advantage through created resources; this model links 36 attributes covering core resources and attractors, supporting resources and factors, qualifying and amplifying determinant, destination management, destination policy, planning and development as well as macro and micro environmental forces.The Travel and Tourism Competitive Index (TTCI) developed and used by World Economic Forum since 2007 is the latest development in this endeavor; Today, the TTCI for global country ranking is based on four broad sub-indexes; enabling environment, policy and enabling conditions, infrastructure and natural and cultural resources; these sub-indexes consists of several pillars which are made up of different variables or attributes (TTCR, 2015).Rodriguez-Diaz & Espino-Rodriguez(2008) successfully tested a model of strategic evaluation of tourism destination with factors defining the competitiveness of Spanish tourism destination Gran Canaria; this model in Figure 1 is based on internal and relational capabilities and represents a double entry matrix referring to internal and relational strategic value; the model evaluates key factors defining tourism destination competitiveness with tourism supply chain in the focal point combining other areas like geographical, social and socio-cultural conditions, public administration, policy and infrastructure, outsourcing operations, target market segment as well as other stakeholders of the marketing destination.

Figure 1
Figure 1 Model of Strategic Evaluation of Tourism Destination adopted from Rodriguez-Diaz & Espino-Rodriguez (2008)

FACTORS
WHICH STRATEGICALLY EXPLAIN THE COMPETITIVENESS OF A TOURISM DESTINATION: EVIDENCE FROM SINGAPORE AND SRI LANKA M. Prasad F. Jayasuriya, Cheng Guoping