Comparison of destination competitiveness ranking in the European Union using a non-parametric approach

This paper seeks to improve accuracy when presenting the tourism performance of European countries and, in particular, the position of destination management organizations, which play a central role in the tourism development of their countries. The paper measures the performance of European countries and endeavours to explain the dispersion of the efficiency ranking scores in the European Union (EU). Three types of methodology are applied to establish the tourism performance of the destinations. The study covers 27 large and small countries in the EU, but excludes Malta. In addition, two representative indicators of output are used: destination attractiveness and annual data on bed-nights and nights spent. Therefore, the paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA), super-efficiency DEA and the non-radial Nerlove-Luenberger super-efficiency DEA model to narrow down the partition between efficiency and inefficiency scores in large and small countries in terms of development.