Development Opportunities for a Tourism Benchmarking Tool-The Case of Tyrol

Abstract The aim of this study is to improve an already existing Tourism benchmarking tool designed and implemented by the Austrian Provincial Government of Tyrol in 1987 (Haemmerle and Lehar 1987, Berktold 1992). After a brief introduction which overviews latest benchmarking approaches within tourism (Morey and Dittman 1995, Kozak and Rimmington 1998, Siguaw and Enz 1999, Dubé et al. 1999, Ritchie and Crouch 2000) and emphasizing its strategic significance of continually monitoring and emulating standards of performance, the principal purpose of an already existing benchmarking tool, the Tyrolean Tourism Barometer, is described in form of a case study. Both, the data gathering process as well as the operational sequences leading to a variety of indicators are thoroughly discussed. The paper concludes by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of this secondary data based benchmarking tool. The final section of the paper critically assesses the neglect of relevant elements within the production process of tourism services. Here, the point will be made that it will not suffice to only describe structural shifts in tourism supply and demand in order to establish a reliable instrument for retrospectively evaluating tourism policy and strategically optimize future destination policies. Thus, the existing approach, initially based on price and capacity data only, is extended by linking it to both quality measures of customer satisfaction as well as resource allocation conditions (Weiermair and Fuchs 1999, Wöber 2000).

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