Building composite indicators in tourism studies: Measurements and applications in tourism destination competitiveness

Composite indicators are useful tools to synthesize and monitor multidimensional phenomena. The aim of this paper is twofold: to offer the methodological foundations to build composite indicators in tourism and to evaluate a set of currently available composite indicators. Tourism destination competitiveness indicators constitute the object of this contribution. Their definitions, concepts and measures are analyzed and their evaluation is performed through the application of an original protocol. The results highlight that several methodological issues still surround the measurement of destinations competitiveness indicators. This paper provides tourism scholars and practitioners with a set of statistical guidelines to build composite indicators and with an operative scheme to assess indicators' effectiveness in empirical evaluations.