PDF: A Manual for Evaluating the Quality Performance of Tourist Destinations and Services

Citation
European Communities. (2003). A Manual for Evaluating the Quality Performance of Tourist Destinations and Services. Luxembourg: Enterprise DG

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Summary Quality is vital for a successful tourism industry. Europe has an exciting mix of different products that can be offered to the tourist, and it enjoys a stable market share. Nonetheless, a rapid growth in alternative destinations worldwide means that Europe’s tourism industry today faces the need to be ever more quality conscious to continue to attract tourists in a global marketplace. Quality is rapidly becoming the decisive competitive instrument in tourism.

A quality product is crucial – for a viable business, for an attractive destination and for the sustainability of the tourism industry across Europe. Ensuring the constant improvement of quality, whether it is of a tourist destination as a whole or of the individual attractions and services within it, should be a continuous process. It means setting objectives, developing a strategy, making improvements and checking results.

This manual provides a tool to facilitate measuring, monitoring and benchmarking the quality performance of your tourist destination and services. In this manual it is called “QUALITEST”. The core of the tool is a set of 16 headline indicators for use in Quality Performance Evaluation of tourist destinations and services. This manual presents the indicators and provides detailed instructions for their use.

Keywords
tourism management, tourism services, quality performance evaluation, benchmark, monitoring, indicators