Competitiveness and attractiveness of tourism regions: A systematic review of international studies

Tourism competitiveness and destination attractiveness are central to how countries position themselves in the global travel market, yet research on both has grown quickly and unevenly.This article reviews 109 Scopus-indexed documents published between 2003 and 2026, combining a quantitative profile of the literature with a thematic synthesis.The corpus expands sharply after 2015 and is markedly unbalanced: measurement and frameworks (33.0 per cent) and determinants (32.1 per cent) dominate, analytical methods account for 24.8 per cent, and demand-side perception research for only 10.1 per cent.The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index remains the default benchmark, but its equal weighting, data demands and uneven predictive validity have pushed the field toward alternative and hybrid measures.No technique dominates: data envelopment analysis, TOPSIS, PLS path modelling and game-theoretic weighting compensate for one another's weaknesses.Infrastructure, information and communication technology readiness and environmental quality are the most stable determinants, with effects conditioned by income level.An illustration matching the 2024 Travel & Tourism Development Index with UN Tourism data for twenty-one leading destinations finds moderate correlation with arrivals (r = 0.59) but stronger correlation with receipts (r = 0.72): measured competitiveness tracks the value of tourism more closely than its volume.