Illustrative photo (Source: VNA) Vietnam experienced the greatest score improvement, rising by 4.7 percent toleap from 60th to 52nd on the overall index. Indonesia and Saudi Arabia alsohad great improvements in rank, with an increase of 3.4 percent to the 32ndplace and 2.3 percent to the 33rd place, respectively, the report said.
The WEF report shows that Vietnam’s improved rankings have resulted from itsachievements in COVID-19 prevention, measures of safe and flexible adaptationto the pandemic, and continuous efforts to develop safe tourism.
The report noted that relatively stagnant TTDI results reinforce the difficultsituation the Travel and Tourism (T&T) sector faces. On average, TTDIscores increased by just 0.1 percent between 2019 and 2021.
According to the report, aside from the United States (2nd), the top 10 scoringcountries are high-income economies in Europe and Eurasia or Asia-Pacificregions.
Japan tops the ranking, with fellow regional economies Australia and Singaporecoming in 7th and 9th, respectively. Meanwhile, Italy joined the top 10 (upfrom 12th in 2019) in 2021.
The remaining top 10 TTDI performers are Spain (3rd), France (4th), Germany(5th), Switzerland (6th) and the United Kingdom (8th).
The Asia-Pacific region is the second-highest performer in the ranking. Of its20 constituent economies, 12 score above the TTDI average and 13 have improvedtheir scores since 2019.
Many of the more developed economies in the region have world-class transport,tourism, healthcare and ICT infrastructure, high levels of internationalopenness and investment in T&T, conducive business environments, highperformance for socio-economic resilience and qualified and productiveworkforces.
On the other hand, the region’s less developed economies’ advantage in pricecompetitiveness and rich natural assets are often offset by gaps in theaforementioned factors such as tourism, healthcare and ICT infrastructure,international openness and socio-economic resilience.
However, these gaps are being bridged somewhat as the Asia-Pacific region’slower-middle-income economies have improved their performance, withparticularly strong growth in areas such as ICT readiness.
The TTDI 2021 is an evolution of the 15-year-old Travel & TourismCompetitiveness Index (TTCI) series, according to the WEF. Over the past twoyears, the severe damage to the tourism sector due to the COVID-19 pandemic hascompletely changed its approach in that the forum changed the ranking of TTCIto TTDI.
The transformation of the TTCI into the TTDI reflects the index’s increasedcoverage of T&T development concepts, including sustainability andresilience impact, on T&T growth. It is designed to highlight the sector’srole in broader economic and social development as well as the need for T&Tstakeholder collaboration to mitigate the impact of the pandemic, bolster therecovery and deal with future challenges and risks.
Covering a total of 117 economies, the TTDI ranking is based on the assessmentof a set of tourism development capacity indexes which consists of fivesub-indexes, focusing on evaluating the role of the tourism industry in broadereconomic and social development./.
VNA
