Establishing a national tourist service quality framework: Spain’s experience

With governments and entrepreneurs worldwide facing the pressing issue of raising the competitiveness of their respective states in the global tourist market, tourism has been treated as a largely prioritized sector of economy in the past few years. The globally experienced resource shortage, agricultural output precariousness, the lack of industrial growth have turned the attention of the authorities to the development potential of tourism as a sector of economy. However, tourists today are notably different from their counterparts of a few decades ago. Competition in the tourism sector is escalating not only on the company-against-company scale, but on a state-against-state, or even, continent-against-continent scale. At present, a key competitive advantage that encourages the tourist inflow is the tourist service quality, and a great number of European governments are currently focusing their attention on ensuring quality tourist service provision. The article considers Spain’s experience in establishing a tourist service quality framework, which has significantly contributed to the country’s status of a global tourist industry leader in terms of the level of tourist industry development and the revenue from this sector of state economy.