Identifying drivers of destination attractiveness in a competitive environment: A comparison of approaches

This study applies a demand-side analysis framework to assess drivers of destination attractiveness in consideration of competitor destinations. The framework, consisting of a relevance-determinance analysis (RDA) and a competitive-performance analysis (CPA), is further benchmarked against competing variants of importance-performance analysis (IPA). As this study reveals, the RDA+CPA framework significantly outperforms the IPA approaches with regard to the level of detail and validity of recommended managerial action. In particular, this study reveals that the original IPA framework of recommendations is not compatible for use with attributes that are characterized by large discrepancies between relevance (stated importance) and determinance (derived importance). If only one of these importance dimensions is available, then researchers/analysts must carefully consider the meaningfulness of implications for each attribute that is subject to analysis. In general, when applying IPA, researchers and analysts should be aware that what is generally considered important by customers/tourists might not necessarily also be important in driving their actual consumption experience. Finally, as this study also shows, IPA runs the risk of providing misleading implications regarding competitive advantages and disadvantages if the competitor dimension is actually not included in the analysis.