Microsoft Word 2007 ichrie conference Proceedings Final-Final 06-06-07. doc

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The findings of the canonical correlation analysis supports the proposed hypothesis that the quality of 
tourism experience and tourist’ perception of destination competitiveness do relate to each other by sharing 
overlapping variances between the pairs of canonical variates representing the two major concepts respectively. The 
research, through empirical testing, further validates the notion of the relationship between destination 
competitiveness and quality of tourism experience (Dwyer et al., 2004; Hassan, 2000; Dwyer, Forsyth, and Rao, 
2000a; Dwyer and Kim, 2003). Previous studies indicated that destination competitiveness, to a large extent, 
depends on the ability of a destination to deliver better goods and services which relate to the tourism experience 
considered to be important by tourists.
Tourists’ perceptions on what is a high quality vacation experience and how they perceive destination 
competitiveness could provide important insights to destination managers and marketers. The results indicate that 

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