Aliasghar Taghipour’s scientific contributions

Abstract Competitiveness is a famous word frequently mentioned in the management and economics literature. In recent decades, this concept has been entered into tourism literature and has received growing recognition. Over the past years, many studies on topics such as Destination Competitiveness or more generally Travel and Tourism Competitiveness, have been done by researchers in various parts of the world. These studies deal with issues such as identifying key attributes of destination competitiveness, determining importance of competitiveness factors, investigating positions of the particular destinations and developing models for destination competitiveness. Most of these studies aim to help destination managers to identify weaknesses and strengths of the destinations. Therefore, determining importance of the competitiveness factors is critical issue in tourism competitiveness studies; but results of the said studies relatively differ in identifying importance of the competitiveness factors. Hence, the central questions underlying this paper were put: “Which variables must be considered when analysing importance of competitiveness determinations? And, which one of these determinations is more critical to create and enhance destination competitiveness?” After reviewing literature to identify different approaches to the study of destination competitiveness, and discussion about topics such as different political ideologies, governance and managerial structures, different stages of development and tourism life cycle in the destinations, and difference between destination competitiveness and destination attractiveness, it was concluded that differences in results of these studies may be due to different situations in which such studies have been done. These situations refer to the different political structures, distinct ideologies of politicians, different development stages and tourism life cycles or different views of experts who are surveyed in the case studies. Furthermore, differences between destination competitiveness and its attractiveness must be considered when analysing destination competitiveness. Key words: destination competitiveness (DC), destination attractiveness, competitiveness attributes, political ideologies.