Foreign Studies on Improving Competitiveness for Tourism Development

CHAPTER 1. OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH SITUATION

1.1. Foreign studies on enhancing competitiveness for tourism development

The research direction on competitiveness (CVC) for tourism development is approached by authors from different perspectives including: CVC of tourist destinations, national CVC, provincial CVC, tourism CVC, industry CVC, enterprise CVC, product CVC. In this part, the author focuses on an overview of the approach to CVC of tourist destinations, national CVC, provincial CVC and industry CVC:

Approach from the theory of tourism destination competitiveness

There are Ahmed and Krohn, 1990; Ritchie and Crouch, 1993; Bordas, 1994; Pearce, 1997; Woodside and Carr, 1988; Crouch and Ritchie, 1999; Kozak and Rimmington, 1999; Buhalis, 2000; Harteserre, 2000; Go and Govers, 2000;

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Hassan, 2000; Mihalic, 2000; Thomas and Long, 2000; Kozak, 2001, and two typical authors are Dwyer & Kim (2 3) Ritchie & Crouch, 2 3. In which, the two research models of Crouch & Ritchie (1999) and Dwyer & Kim (2 3) have been applied relatively popularly and expanded in many different directions in practice both in the world and domestically. Dwyer & Kim (2 3) concluded that the competitiveness of tourist destinations is generally accepted based on 3 main groups of factors: (i) comparative advantages that help compete on price; (ii) strategic and management capabilities; and (iii) historical, cultural, and social resources. Tourism competitiveness can be assessed at many levels, macro (national level) or micro (enterprise level) (Ritchie & Crouch, 2003; Dwyer & Kim, 2003) [65]. In another approach, competitive advantage and comparative advantage are often mentioned when discussing competitiveness in tourism (Porter, 1990) although the difference between these two types of advantages is rarely clarified (Ritchie & Crouch, 2003).

Ritchie & Crouch (2003) argue that for each tourist destination, comparative advantage refers to the available resources such as climate, landscape, flora and fauna.

Competitive advantage, meanwhile, refers to the resources created such as infrastructure (accommodation, transportation, etc.), festivals and events, management skills, human resource quality, etc. In other words, comparative advantage is the resources that a tourist destination possesses, while competitive advantage is the destination's ability to effectively exploit its resources. The competitiveness of a tourist destination is determined by both types of advantages.

Approach from the theory of national competitiveness

M.Porter (1980, 1998, 2007) defines "national competitiveness as the ability of enterprises participating in value-added activities in a specific industry in a specific country to maintain added value over a long period of time" [95,96]. With his research results, the author explains and clarifies the factors affecting the competitiveness of a country (a locality) in a certain industry. Accordingly, competitiveness is expressed through the connection of 4 groups of factors: Conditions of production and service factors; Conditions of demand; Supporting and related industries; Industry strategy, structure and competition. These factors interact with each other and create the competitiveness of a country, a locality in the industry. In addition, there are two other factors: Government Policy and Opportunity. Although the work does not delve into the field of tourism services, M. Porter's competition theory can be used quite appropriately in studying the competitiveness of the tourism industry.

Approach from provincial competitiveness theory

Provincial Competitiveness Index is an index to evaluate and rank the governments of provinces and cities in Vietnam in creating a business environment for enterprises and attracting FDI capital towards the ultimate goal of economic development and improving the living standards of the people of that province, with four characteristics:

First, the PCI index encourages provincial governments to improve the quality of governance by standardizing scores around existing good economic governance practices in Vietnam rather than based on standards.

Economic governance is ideal but difficult to achieve, so for each indicator, it is possible to identify a “star” province or a leading province for that indicator, and in theory any province can achieve an absolute PCI score of 100 points.

Second, by eliminating the influence of traditional initial conditions (the fundamental factors that contribute to economic growth in a province and are almost impossible to change in the short term such as geography, infrastructure, market size and human resources), the PCI helps identify and target good economic governance practices that can be achieved at the provincial level.

Third, by comparing governance practices with economic performance, the PCI helps quantify the importance of good economic governance practices for attracting investment and growth. The study found a correlation between good economic governance practices and firm evaluations and improvements in local well-being. This last link is particularly important because it suggests that business-friendly policies and initiatives encourage them to operate in ways that benefit business owners, workers, and communities by creating more jobs and increasing incomes for the economy as a whole.

Fourth, the indicators that make up the PCI provincial competitiveness index are designed to be actionable, these are specific indicators that allow provincial officials to set goals and monitor progress in implementation. These indicators are also very practical because they are recognized by businesses as key policies for business success. Thus, this study is a study of provincial competitiveness in the tourism sector in the service industry in Vietnam's mixed economy under the socialist-oriented market mechanism with State management divided into 3 main economic sectors: Industry

Industry; Service industry; Agriculture are closely related to each other.

In particular, the theoretical model of assessing local competitiveness in tourism development at the micro level by M. Porter (2007) shows that local resources will create competitive advantages, however, the assessment of competitiveness in tourism needs to have a comprehensive view to make the assumption that each province is limited to a set of local resources, but instead of being assessed independently, they must be considered in an interdependent relationship to be able to enhance the competitiveness of that province. This model is especially important for studies on competitiveness at local levels in tourism development as a complex system in which each quantity includes many clusters/industries and different resources of local advantages depending on the destination location and business culture [96].

How to use M.Porter's model (2007): The original diamond model includes 4 main factors: Factors conditions; Local strategy, structure and competition; Supporting and related industries; Demand conditions, they directly affect local competitiveness in tourism and in turn create the following links:

Link 1. Competitive quality: The strategic, structural and competitive factors of the enterprise are linked to the conditions of the factors.

Link 2. Competitive input: Strategic factors, structure and competition of the enterprise are linked with Marketing factors, policies, planning, control, tourism development.

Link 3. Supporting demand: Supporting and related industries linked to demand conditions

Linkage 4. Supporting Supply: Supporting and related industries linked to factor conditions

Approach from the theory of industry-level competitiveness

M. Porter (1980), an economic sector is considered to have competitive capacity when the enterprises in the sector and the main products of the sector have competitive capacity in the market. Factors determining the competitiveness of an economic sector include: Comparative advantage of the sector, the macro-economic environment and the business environment of the sector, the competitiveness of enterprises in the sector and the competitiveness of the specific products/services of the sector described in the model of five competitive "forces" or five competitive "forces" including: Business strategy; Industry structure and competitors; Competitive conditions; Demand conditions; Supporting and related industries [96].

Along with the strong integration of Vietnam into the world economy in recent years, the opening of the service sector has created great pressure on the issue of improving the competitiveness of Vietnam's service sectors. It can be said that the competitiveness of most service sectors in Vietnam is currently low compared to the world and even compared to developing countries in the region. This brings difficulties to Vietnam's service sector in both the export market and the domestic market. However, the potential and development opportunities are still ahead, the problem is that research is needed to make appropriate decisions to gradually improve the competitiveness of service sectors in general and the competitiveness in the tourism sector in particular.

Recently, the World Tourism Council and the World Economic Forum (WEF) have used a set of indicators to assess the competitiveness of the Tourism/Travel industry, including 8 main indicators, which have attracted the attention of many countries in the world right after being announced by WEF in 2014. Then, starting from 2017 until now, every year, WEF has published a report on the results of research on the tourism competitiveness of countries. This is considered important information and basis to help researchers and managers.

Tourism business managers study and evaluate the competitiveness of different tourist destinations.

1.2. Vietnam's studies on improving the competitiveness of tourism destinations

Research on enhancing tourism destination competitiveness in Vietnam is not a new topic. Researchers approach tourism destination competitiveness from many different perspectives and at each stage, the research has made contributions and has different practical meanings. Some typical studies can be mentioned as follows:

Project VIE 89-3 (1989) on the Vietnam Tourism Development Guideline by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) studied the competitiveness of Vietnam tourism – from the perspective of Vietnam as an international tourist destination.

The research topic of the Department of Trade and Services, Ministry of Planning and Investment in collaboration with the research group of the National Economics University (2006), Competitiveness and impacts of liberalization of the tourism industry sponsored by UNDP focused on analyzing the influencing factors and general assessment of the competitiveness of the Vietnamese tourism industry as well as the different impacts from the ongoing liberalization process in the industry.

Nguyen Anh Tuan and colleagues (2 7), in the ministerial-level topic "Research on the current situation and solutions to improve competitiveness in the field of international tourism of Vietnam in the context of international integration " analyzed the current situation of competitiveness in the field of international tourism of Vietnam in the context of international economic integration based on criteria of capital, technology, management level, products and services, human resources and compared with competitors in the region. At the same time, on the basis of an overview of the current situation of competitiveness of the Vietnamese economy, through the results of ranking and evaluating the competitiveness of tourism and travel (WEF), provided some orientations and focused on proposing three important groups of solutions: a group of micro-scale solutions related to policies and guidelines, a group of

Solutions of the Tourism Association and solutions of travel businesses to contribute to improving Vietnam's competitiveness in the field of tourism in the context of integration [29].

Ha Thanh Hai (2 1), in the project Improving the Competitive Competence of Vietnamese Hotels in the coming time , focused on studying the Competitive Competence of hotel businesses. The highlight of this project is that it has studied the experience of improving the Competitive Competence of a number of international hotel groups. At the same time, this research project has also systematized a number of methods for evaluating the Competitive Competence of hotels and applied them in practice to evaluate the Competitive Competence of Vietnamese hotels such as the method of collecting expert opinions, the Thomson - Stricland matrix evaluation method and the customer survey method. In which, the Thomson - Stricland matrix evaluation method is a relatively scientific method with a fairly high reliability [17].

Nguyen Anh Tuan (2 1) in his doctoral thesis Improving the competitiveness of Vietnam's tourism destinations has studied a number of basic theoretical issues on destination competitiveness in tourism development such as: competition, competitiveness, destinations and destination competitiveness. The author applied the Integrated model of Dwyer and Kim (2 3) and the Survey Monkey online survey method to investigate, analyze and evaluate the current status of competitiveness of Vietnam's tourism destinations. The thesis also pointed out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges for Vietnam's tourism industry as well as the causes of limitations in the destination competitiveness of Vietnam's tourism industry. Thereby, 4 viewpoints are proposed to improve the competitiveness of Vietnam's tourism destinations, including:

1. Tourism must become one of the leading economic sectors, making an important contribution to national prosperity.

2. The policy environment must facilitate tourism development.

3. The tourism industry must be developed in a dynamic direction, adapt quickly and respond promptly to changes.

4. The tourism industry must be developed towards quality, efficiency and sustainability [17].

Nguyen Quang Vinh (2 11), when studying the Competitiveness of Vietnamese international travel businesses after Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), generalized the concepts of competitiveness including the competitiveness of international travel businesses, factors affecting competition, and indicators measuring the competitiveness of international travel businesses. Based on Porter M.'s value chain model, the author has built a system of constituent factors (6 factors, 17 indicators) to reflect the competitiveness of an international travel business, taking into account the ability to connect, cooperate and manage crises according to the characteristics of these businesses. In addition, the work has used the method of matrix research and mathematical tools, and has built a quantitative model that allows determining the level of influence of resource factor groups on businesses [43].

Nguyen Thi Thu Van (2 12), when studying the competitiveness of Da Nang tourism destinations , generalized the concepts of tourism competitiveness of international authors and analyzed the factors affecting the competitiveness of tourism in Da Nang city, one of the attractive destinations of Vietnam and the region. When studying the competitiveness of Da Nang, the author relied on the average value of 84 indicators (Dwyer and Kim's Integrated Model) to clarify the factors affecting the competitiveness of Da Nang city. The research results showed that there are 7 factors formed, affecting the competitiveness of Da Nang tourism destinations, including: (1) Natural resources; (2) Inherited resources; (3) Created resources; (4) Support resources; (5) Destination management; (6) Circumstances, and; (7) Demand conditions. The results of statistical analysis describe the 7 factors.

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