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Well-Being of Locals, Tourist Experiences and Destination Competitiveness

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Co-Creation and Well-Being in Tourism

Part of the book series: Tourism on the Verge ((TV))

Abstract

For destinations, local residents are important part-time marketers. As an inherent part of a destination they add to tourist experiences. Previous research has documented how important a welcoming attitude is for tourists and how tourist experiences command the competitiveness of destinations. To this formula, the current study adds the well-being component of the locals by the argument that happy people with high level of social well-being tend to be more open minded and social and by that more welcoming. This study examines destination competitiveness through the lens of tourist experiences and well-being and attitudes of local residents. To accomplish this, three objectives are set: (1) to present a local society oriented model of destination competitiveness; (2) to develop instruments for measuring the selected key success factors in determining destination competitiveness: (3) and to empirically test and display findings arising from a study of both locals, living in, and tourists visiting the city of Vaasa in Ostrobothnia, Finland. The findings indicate that well-being of locals had a significant impact on the social attitude dimensions of local’s attitude towards tourists, and the tourists considered their encounter with locals as positive and nice. Thus, a significant link between the social attitude dimension and well-being of the locals were also found. Also, there is a strong link between tourist experiences and the destination competitiveness dimension, particularly the educational dimensions, while the other dimensions, esthetic, entertainment, and escapist, were not significant. Future research topics are discussed at the end of the chapter.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. HANKEN School of Economics, Vaasa, Finland

    Peter Björk

  2. University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland

    Erose Sthapit

Authors
  1. Peter Björk
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  2. Erose Sthapit
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter Björk .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CEFAGE, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal

    Antónia Correia

  2. Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir, Turkey

    Metin Kozak

  3. University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Juergen Gnoth

  4. University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

    Alan Fyall

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Björk, P., Sthapit, E. (2017). Well-Being of Locals, Tourist Experiences and Destination Competitiveness. In: Correia, A., Kozak, M., Gnoth, J., Fyall, A. (eds) Co-Creation and Well-Being in Tourism. Tourism on the Verge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44108-5_12

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