Taiwan’s global travel and tourism competitiveness ranking moved up to 43rd this year from 52nd last year, the latest survey report released on Wednesday by the World Economic Forum (WEF) showed.
The WEF-drawn Global Competitiveness Rankings are based on the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI) and covers 133 economies around the world.
Taiwan’s higher TTCI global ranking this year could probably be attributed to its increased number of hotel rooms and car rentals as well as a surge in its creative industries exports, analysts said.
However, despite an improved ranking this year, Taiwan fell far short of 30th place, which it held in 2007, when the WEF released TTCI rankings for the first time.
Among Taiwan’s major competitors was China, which moved up in this year’s rankings to 47th from 62nd last year, and South Korea, which remained in the 31st spot.
The WEF report said Switzerland, Austria and Germany maintained the top three places in that order, in the TTCI report.
Rounding out the top 10 list were France, Canada, Spain, Sweden, the US, Australia and Singapore, in descending order.
Meanwhile, Taiwan placed ninth in the TTCI’s Asia-Pacific rankings, trailing behind Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand, but placed one notch ahead of China.
As the data used in the comparative reports was collected between February and May last year, WEF executives said, the economic crisis sparked by the US subprime fallout was not factored into the competitiveness rankings.
The TTCI uses a combination of data from publicly available sources, international travel and tourism institutions and experts, as well as the results of the Executive Opinion Survey — a comprehensive annual survey conducted by the WEF and its network of partner institutes in the countries covered by the report.
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