Destination Competitiveness — A Comparison of Subjective and Objective Indicators for Winter Sports Areas

Studies about measuring competitiveness of winter sport destinations are rare. Subjective measurements seem to dominate research mostly either from demand or supply side; however, seldom integrated approaches from both sides are used. Objective measures seem to be scarce, and comparisons of both subjective and objective measures seem to have been neglected so far. To increase the credibility of previous findings, this article relies on subjective primary data (demand and supply side), also named “soft” data, and objective secondary data (demand side), also named “hard” data, on the competitiveness of six Alpine destinations. Findings show evidence that subjective performance measures show deviations from the results based on objective measures.