This year’s report includes discussion and findings of two powerful benchmarking approaches, “fair share” analysis of a destination’s business levels and “ratio analysis” meant to help destinations focus in on their most important competitive issues based on which cities they are actually competing with.
Is your destination getting its fair share?
Through the index, GaningEdge has introduced the concept of “fair share” to the world of convention destinations. The Competitive Index system is able to take any competitive set and determine how the cities within it are performing in relation to their fair share. (See sidebar for instructions on using the report for calculating your destination’s fair share.)
A tale of three cities
GainingEdge has developed a scenario model that also includes whether the destination is growing or declining in relation to its number of meetings occurring over the last 3 years compared to the 3 years prior to that. To illustrate the strategic uses of the index the 2019 report takes a look at a couple of competitive sets, namely university towns and Scandinavian cities. Aarhus, Denmark happens to make both of those lists.
To use Aarhus as an example, the city has done well and is accelerating in terms of the numbers of conventions occurring. However, the report suggests that the city has “room to move” with additional meetings required if it is to achieve its fair share in relation to other Scandinavian cities and other university towns.
The report shows that Stockholm is the city to beat in Scandinavia in terms of both growth and fair share, while Gent is the star among University cities. GainingEdge says that other cities in these two competitive sets can use the information to make informed decisions about their convention booking goals and destination development strategies.
How destinations can use ratio analysis to focus in on what matters most
This year’s report also includes a section that shows how a destination can analyse its competitive advantages and disadvantages while setting business goals and formulating destination development strategies. GainingEdge uses “ratio analysis” to establish the relative importance of each competitive factor for success within a given competitive set.
