Formulating A Competitive Advantage Model for Tourism Destinations in Indonesia

Indonesia has successfully increased its ranking to 40th place in the 2019 Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index. While tourism has become the country’s second largest foreign exchange contributor, there is no existing competitive advantage model for Indonesian tourist destinations. The purpose and novelty of this study is to develop and formulate a competitive advantage model for Indonesia’s tourism industry. The model will be based on the supply-side perception analysis of competitiveness indicators from Bali and five designated super-priority destinations in Indonesia. This model is expected to become a guideline for policymakers to design an effective and focused strategy. Data were obtained from in-depth interviews with, and questionnaires given to, 62 qualified industry players from the public and private sectors. This data-driven approach builds a relationship between competitiveness indicators and competitive advantages using a combination of importance-performance analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, thereby leveraging these advantages to generate a strategic model to compete in the international tourism industry. This would also be the first study to use this method in defining the competitive advantage of a destination. Using structural equation modeling, the study found that there are 54 indicators representing twelve dimensions of competitive advantages with good fit criteria. KCI Citation Count: 1