Incremental effects of the Shanghai Free-trade Zone - an internet informed assessment of Hong Kong’s tourism competitiveness

Abstract

The pursuit of tourism destination competitiveness (TDC) has become an important consideration for policy makers as a means of growing tourism market share. However, the published research tends to interpret TDC as the combined performance of various destination attributes, thereby overlooking other factors that impact on TDC. This study suggests that assessments should focus on the most influential events and proposes an “incremental” approach to determining TDC. The concept “smart tourism destination”, which has been applied increasingly in China, is used because it allows the use of insights from internet-based news that draw upon timely and relevant information to assess TDC. Using internet-based news sources, this study assesses Hong Kong’s TDC in the context of the recently established Shanghai Free-trade Zone (SFTZ). An incremental approach is adopted because it provides a means of explaining the threats that SFTZ poses to Hong Kong as a tourist destination. 提升旅游目的地竞争力是政策制定者扩大旅游市场份额的重要考虑因素。現有文獻倾向于闡釋旅游目的地竞争力為各种目的地特質的综合效能，因此其它因素对於旅游目的地竞争力的影响常被忽視。本研究顯示，旅游目的地竞争力的评估应着眼于最具影响力的事件，并提出以一个“叠加”的方式来決定旅游目的地竞争力。本研究採用智能旅游目的地的概念，並根據以互联网为基础的資訊，就最近成立的上海自由贸易区的背景下评估香港的旅游目的地竞争力，并以叠加方式來解释上海自由贸易区對香港作为一個旅游目的地的威胁。