Effects of Promotion and Resources on Tourism Performance: A Comparative Study of African vs Non-African Countries

Competitiveness has turned out to be one of the common ideas employed in the present years to approach and portray the maintainable improvement of the travel and tourism industry. This study used the Destination Competitive Model to assess the effect of tourism promotion and tourism resources on tourism performance. The sample of sixty countries were taken in this study, whereby both African and Non-Africa countries each represented by thirty countries. Data collection of this study was from Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report (2015) since it is a quantitative study. The data analysis was conducted by multiple regression using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) software to examine the key factors which significantly predict the tourism performance. The results of this study indicated that natural resources and cultural factors are representing two significant pillars of the tourism performance: that is why tourists’ arrivals and tourism receipts are based on the natural resources and cultural factors could provide a consistent support for increasing the competitiveness of the African countries against Non-African countries. However, the result indicated that both marketing effectiveness and promotion budget were found having no substantial influence upon the tourism performance in both African and Non-African countries. The key managerial implication of this study is to recommend the organizations, government and marketers relevant to tourism industry in African countries to emphasize the importance of keeping and preserving natural and cultural factors for the purpose of being competitive.