The cluster structuring and development in a destination offers four main types of benefits: enhancing competitiveness, boosting profitability and growth, ensuring sustainability and increasing marketing effectiveness.
As the Competitiveness Planning 3.0 Whitepaper explains in detail, destination competitiveness is based on the relation between value offered to the visitors and efforts demanded, considering experiences, feelings, service quality, and positive impacts of tourism development in the destination as the sources of value; and discomforts, risks, price and negative impacts of the tourism development in the destination as the sources of efforts demanded, or factors diminishing value.
Among all these key factors that determine the destination’s competitiveness, the tourist experience is probably the most important. In this regard, having a higher concentration of experiences –related to the same motivational profile- available within a short distance (not needing to change accommodation in many cases, nor consuming much time in transfers) clearly optimizes the whole destination experience. Cluster development also entails an increasing variety of experiences available, beyond the experience efficiency due to the reduced distances within the cluster.
A good cluster planning should consider a strategy to prevent congestion issues by spreading the tourism flows right from the conception of the cluster layout. This may be achieved by creating many itineraries throughout the cluster to diversify the visitor’s flows –avoiding “backbone itineraries” which tend to concentrate the flows-, and preventing bottlenecks.
Furthermore, by creating themed itineraries and charming transportation systems which may eventually become iconic experiences themselves, not only are the tourist flows spread out but also the experience is enhanced. Charming transportation systems may be traditional transportation means –gondolas, tramways, etc.- made tourist friendly in terms of comfort, or just innovative transport means which are a new experience for the visitors.
Business concentration makes it also more feasible to invest in key resources, which eventually influence positively the cluster’s competitiveness. This may be the case of educational facilities, R&D centers, and cross-destination infrastructures related to accessibility, environmental management & protection, etc.
Do you think of other clustering benefits for the destination competitiveness?
