COMPETITIVENESS ARCHETYPES OF LEADING TOURISM ECONOMIES AND THE POSITION OF UZBEKISTAN: A MULTIVARIATE CLUSTER ANALYSIS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21178250Abstract
Cross-country competitiveness comparison is usually conducted one indicator at a time, obscuring the multivariate
profiles that distinguish groups of destinations. This study applies principal component analysis and k-means
clustering to the 2024 Travel and Tourism Development Index profiles of ten leading tourism economies and Uzbekistan,
characterized by their overall index and four subindices: policy and enabling conditions, environmental sustainability,
safety, and health. The analysis recovers a clear archetype structure: the ten advanced economies divide into two profile-
based clusters of uniformly high performers, while Uzbekistan forms a separate third cluster, indicating a distinct competitiveness
profile within the analysed sample and remaining separated from every advanced economy along the first
principal component, which alone accounts for the majority of profile variance. The clustering quantifies not merely that
Uzbekistan differs from the leading economies but also the multivariate distance and direction of that gap, showing it to
be broad-based across all dimensions rather than concentrated. The findings provide a structured peer-group framework
for target-setting and identify the dimensions along which convergence toward the advanced archetype would be most
consequential.
Keywords
tourism competitiveness; cluster analysis; principal components; archetypes; benchmarking; UzbekistanReferences
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