Regional Tourism Competitiveness

Tourism is considered today to be the leading economic activity, contributing more than 10% to the world's gross domestic product. Given its importance, especially in developing countries, it becomes significant to study ways to improve its competitiveness. This chapter discusses ways to enhance the development and competitiveness of tourism regions. It uses local or territorial economic development and empowerment as its theoretical frameworks in order to examine social capital. The focus will be on how the latter can be a factor supporting tourism development at local levels. Lebanese regions are used to show how social capital is affecting competitiveness.