COMPARATIVE COMPETITIVENESS INDICATORS, WHICH RANKING FOR THE ALGERIAN TOURISM?

This article presents an analysis of the different methods and summary indicators published by international organizations (World Economic Forum, United Nations, etc.) to rank the countries globally in terms of the attractiveness and competitiveness of tourism. The study focuses on the case of Algeria, a country with a rich and diversified tourist potential that should definitely be a destination on the international or regional scale, just like its neighbors in the Maghreb (Morocco and Tunisia). Recent figures on Algeria's world rankings in terms of competitiveness described a reality far from this hypothesis. The 2017 Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report ranked Algeria in the 118th out of 136 countries. Same wise the World Economic Forum (WEF) in its 2018 edition, put Algeria in the least attractive countries ranked 92nd out of 140. As generally known the territorial attractiveness is at the core concept of the competitiveness of the touristic destinations. However, this does not apply in the case of Algeria, as developed further in this article the country is attractive but not competitive.An American researcher Allain Lew (Lew, 1987) established a framework for the tourism attraction. Lew proposed a definition to attractiveness as: "The basic element on which tourism is developed" (Lew, 1987, p. 554) if we consider the definition of Lew, the Algerian territory is extremely attractive, therefore contradictory to the above mentioned rankings. This definition brings out a substantial problem, related to the measurement of attractiveness. On what basis can we say that one territory is attractive or that it is more attractive than another? What indicators are used to classify the territories according to their degree of attractiveness? To answer this problem, we have proceeded to a comparative approach of different rankings and their respective effectiveness. We also proceeded to a quantitative approach which consists in calculating two indicators of tourist attractiveness across the Algerian territory for the period 2008-2017. (The index of territorial attractiveness and the average duration of stays).