Differentiation in the tourism sector: an evolutionary analysis

Authored by Dolores Garcia, Maria Tugores

Date Published: 2013-10

DOI: 10.5367/te.2013.0330

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: Microsoft Visual Studio

Model Documentation: Other Narrative Mathematical description

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

The debate on the sustainability of mass tourism development strategies for given destinations has focused to a large degree on the advisability of shifting the pattern of specialization towards higher quality. However, little and limited theoretical analysis exists to support this idea. This paper proposes an evolutionary agent-based model for analysing this topic. Different initial configurations of the distribution of hotel qualities and varied saturation levels in the destination lead to different equilibrium configurations. It is found that high-quality and low-quality segments coexist in most of the simulations. Also, the saturation level of a given destination is crucial in determining the weight of the different quality segments up to a limit or maximum level beyond which a strategy of enhancing quality is no longer effective.
Tags
evolutionary model hotel differentiation saturation tourism competition