Lasting Tourist Development

The competitiveness of any tourist destiny depends of multiple factors: a well positioned international image; products that answer satisfactorily market's requirements, both in a functional and symbolic level; a good price related to what the tourist exp ects and perceives; a proper commercial distribution for each product-market, as flexible and direct as possible; publicity that adequately promotes the appropriate messages, with motivating but realistic satisfaction offerings; a tourist operation with e nough productivity and income; among others.

However, the competitive tourist achievement of a country or region requires an integral focus, that allows it to attain a consistent foundation, permanent adaptation and a persistent consolidation.

Competitiveness must be systemic, embracing the whole tourist system and determining factors in the territorial surroundings (it all conforms a sectorial metasystem). It should be based, on one hand, in an efficient and coordinated management of all touri st related actors: hotels, receptive operators, transport companies and other tourist related services, tourist promotion organizations, institutions and local communities, etc. On the other hand, competitiveness will depend on the efficient function of t he organized territory, which should act as a support; that is, it will depend on the level of basic territorial infrastructure endowment, on the quality of the general support services and on the efficiency of central, regional and local public managemen t.

Business or sectorial competitiveness is conditioned by the surrounding territorial operation competitiveness, conformed not only by the tourist attractions available, but by the macroeconomic situation, the existing institutional network, transport and telecommunications infrastructure, public services, financial services, public safety, environment quality, etc.

For a systemic competitiveness to exist, cooperation between all public and private actors implicated in tourist management should develop, allowing the creation of sectorial policy networks and the spouting of more favorable structural conditions that s trengthen the sector. It will allow greater business competitiveness, backed by a competitive territorial surrounding.