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