| As part of the service sector, tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, and it is predicted to be a main provider of job opportunities both directly and indirectly. Furthermore, it is also estimated that from the year2015, emerging economies will receive over one billion arrivals till2030, more than industrial economies, Asia and pacific region will gain its place as getting most of the new tour arrival and becoming strongest growing outbound region according to a report by WTO in2011.The objectives of this dissertation is to identify the elements of a new paradigm, specifies to Sri Lankan tourism cluster that would help to become a competitive tourism destination in international tourism market. The study investigates competitiveness of tourism cluster both by objective measures based on tourist arrivals, income, investments and subjective measures by developing an integrated model combining three main dimensions:clustering, competitive advantage and innovation focus. It critically analyzes the competitiveness by creating an index to compare with rival destinations, conducts econometric analysis on factors of tourism competitiveness and competitive advantage with current specialization position by Shift-Share Analysis in line with regional tourist arrivals of rival destinations, and develops an integrated model.The study addresses the destination competitiveness by developing an index including current performance in the global tourism market scaled by size, dynamism of performance overtime/growth rate and Size of the industrial base in the economic structure with rival destinations and to justify an econometric modeling. The Shift Share Analysis is employed to account region-wise competitiveness, as it breaks down regional growth into three components:National share (NS), Industry mix (IM) and Regional shift (RS). To employ the shift-share analysis, two propositions have been developed for the Sri Lanka tourism destination.It is also addressed the subjective measures through tourism cluster competitiveness model based on supply side tourism stakeholders. The proposed theoretical model addresses the ranking based on own judgments, by first identifying the most rival destinations to Sri Lanka and rank each81determinants according to Likert five-point scale and empirically tested on descriptive statistics. Respondents were asked to complete a self-administered survey by providing structured questionnaires and final usable sample of431respondents were used on developing hypotheses. The findings of this study indicate that the present tourism competitiveness of Sri Lanka as in a moderate level and it’s not specialization among its competitive advantage market regions in the global tourism, as clustering based on strategic themes could integrate the innovative approaches more effectively towards economic development. Non-price based strategies have identified as best strategy on value creation as it could integrate with innovation focus within cluster-wise, than just to increase tourist arrivals to a destination. Hypotheses testing on cluster-competitiveness reveals the less-cooperative determinants within the industry, as innovation focus is more weak followed by demand side factors within tourism service, although nature-based tourism is identified as less competitive than Sea and Sand tourism.Accordingly, the objectives and strategic guidelines will way forward the tourism, as first to model strategic thematic clusters with linkages to other industries ultimately to value creation, identify potential markets with great competitive advantage given to the destination, and then apply non-price based strategies to hospitality and tourism. Moreover, innovation experiences, embedded packages with product-services and experiences offered with innovations, process innovations within hospitality and nature-based sustainable tourism practices have highlighted as recommendations, with all tourism superstructure and infrastructure development with visionary destination management focused. The policy implications could be comprehended as;(1) Policy on preparing the economy for tourism growth by creating an environment which in conducive to tourism and hospitality,(2) Policy for prioritized non-price strategies within tourism, as to give high quality-high priced innovative tourism produce/experiences to higher-end tourists,(3) Policy for promote innovations within tourism firm-level, vision towards be innovative rather than imitation an country-level innovations,(4) Policy on prioritizing competitive advantage regions and follows up specialization strategies implementation, novel niche’ sectors identification and innovation embedded services and (5) Policy on Joint program with other destinations, to acquire their best practices, specially with East-Asian tourism leaders as Thailand, Malaysia and China. |
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