Incremental Effects of the Shanghai Free-trade Zone—An Internet Informed Assessment of Hong Kong’s Tourism Competitiveness

The pursuit of tourism destination competitiveness (TDC) has become an important consideration for policy makers as a means of growing tourism market share. However, the published research tends to interpret TDC as the combined performance of various destination attributes, thereby overlooking other factors that impact on TDC. This study suggests that assessments should focus on the most influential events and proposes an “incremental” approach to determining TDC. The concept “smart tourism destination”, which has been applied increasingly in China, is used because it allows the use of insights from internet-based news that draw upon timely and relevant information to assess TDC. Using internet-based news sources, this study assesses Hong Kong’s TDC in the context of the recently established Shanghai Free-trade Zone (SFTZ). An incremental approach is adopted because it provides a means of explaining the threats that SFTZ poses to Hong Kong as a tourist destination.