Maturity in competing tourism destinations: the case of Tenerife

Abstract

Purpose The main purpose of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing literature on the pertinence of TALC (tourism area life cycle) to model and analyse mature destinations, using quantitative data and alternative functional forms. With this purpose, this work analyses the recent data on tourist demand in Tenerife (Canary Islands), which is supposed to be playing the role of “refuge” with respect to other competing resorts, when the latter ones present political instability after the so-called Arab Springs, particularly the Middle East and North Africa. Design/methodology/approach To analyse the data, and to explore potential epiphenomenon, nonlinear competing regression analysis were performed (logistic, Gaussian and logarithmic), taking into account some insights from tourism life cycle theories. Findings Some suggestions are presented for political management of these destinations that are still working under a moratorium on tourist infrastructure. Research limitations/implications Once the TALC is accepted – even under discussion – in the scholarly fore, certain incentives arise to identify, interpret and communicate signals of maturity. Public funds and specific policies (moratoria) can then be solicited to political instances. Further empirical research, complementary quantitative approaches, along with new data that confronts the evolution of demand in Tenerife with paulatine reactivation of competing destinations, will be strongly required to overcome the limitations of this first attempt and to properly determine the effectiveness of rejuvenation policies. Besides, additional quantitative data should be considered to explore the potential explanatory factors beyond the time series analysis into models that are more theoretical. Originality/value The results suggest that the diagnosis of maturity was at least premature in the first place, poorly based on data analysis and fast in promoting specific policies whose effectiveness is under discussion even after decades.

Tourophobia: fear of travel resulting from man-made or natural disasters

“…Crises and disasters are vitally significant for destinations that experience them as such moments can ruin or sully the very images that are instrumental for attracting tourists (Sö nmez et al, 1999;Noh and Vogt, 2013). Crises that have adversely affected tourism in the past decade include the September 11 terrorist attacks (Aschauer, 2010;Blake and Sinclair, 2003;Goodrich, 2002;Mü hlberger et al, 2005), the spread of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK in 2001 (Ritchie et al, 2003), the terrorist attack in Indonesia's province of Bali on 1 October, 2005 (Hitchcock and Putra, 2005), the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic in 2003 (Eichelberger, 2007;Wen et al, 2005;Mao et al, 2010), the 2004 tsunami that struck southeast Asia (Henderson, 2007;Nguyen et al, 2017), Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean (Seraphin, 2019), the global economic crisis in 2008 (Li et al, 2010), the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011 (Forgash, 2011;Rittichainuwat, 2012;Takamatsu, 2014), the 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland (Bird et al, 2010), the 2010 Arab Spring (Afonso-Rodríguez and Santana-Gallego, 2018;Á lvarez-Díaz et al, 2019;Bá ez-García et al, 2018;Lanouar and Goaied, 2019;Perles-Ribes et al, 2018), the Ebola outbreak in West Africa (Mizrachi and Fuchs, 2016) and most recently, the terror attacks at both Brussels and Istanbul airports.…”

Developing a Competitive and Sustainable Destination of the Future: Clusters and Predictors of Successful National-Level Destination Governance across Destination Life-Cycle

“…Tourist destinations are often being compared regarding the number of overnight stays or tourist arrivals, the share of overnight stays or tourist arrivals in a specific market, or corresponding growth rates-an approach based on a classical TALC (Tourism Area Life Cycle) model of destination development [12,99]. However, dealing only with the number of tourist or overnights has its disadvantages, as it does not take into account prices or quality attributes [95,100].…”

Mapping tourism strategy patterns on tourism area life cycle

“…Mapping tourism strategy patterns utility (Adamiak, 2020;B aez-Garc ıa et al, 2018;Chapman and Light, 2016;Kubickova and Martin, 2020;Lundberg, 2015), and a few authors have outright negated TALC (Leiper, 2004;Singh, 2021). Nevertheless, the conflicting literature and continued research involving TALC suggest that the model is still relevant (Butler, 2022;Mckercher and Wong, 2021) and can analyse the destination's development.…”