Comments on: emerging destination index

By: on being emerging | Global Culture

on being emerging | Global Culture — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 03:47:38 +0000

[...] my post on the emerging destinations index, I got some really good feedback about how misleading calling them “emerging [...]

By: juan

juan — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:14:10 +0000

Carlos, very strong argument. The original index issued by Mastercard was called the Emerging Markets Index of which Mexico is without a doubt a main actor. It was too easy to play with the words to name the new index I created, but you’re right in that many of these are not Emerging Destinations. You just gave me an idea on how to tweak this index by adding another dimension that evaluates the number of tourists per capita (or something like that) and use that value inversely to push “less frequent” destinations to the top and more popular ones to the bottom.

By: Carlos Sanchez-Gomez

Carlos Sanchez-Gomez — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:09:35 +0000

I like your index calculations and has been very interesting for me to read your blog. I think you dropped and revalued dimensions in a correct way. It is the Emerging Destination Index title that has been bothering me for a couple of days as you call these non-traditional destinations. These leads me to believe you should have added another dimension to your index that most likely would have taken Beijing and Mexico City away from this list. As a Mexico City resident and a tourism specialst, I can’t call Mexico City an “emerging destination” as it hosts more tourists than Rome does yearly, of course it hosts less than Madrid and others. Olympic capitals? IMHO Beijing and Mexico City without any statistic do not deserve the emerging title at all. Not only because of the Olympics but because they’re each home to one of the world’s only three distinctive original cuisines along with the French. Number of Ancient sites, number of museums, number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites will at least certainly take Mexico City off the list. International O&D air traffic and conectivity takes Mexico City beyond any comparison as it is not only done through Monterrey, Cancun and Tijuana, but through LAX, DFW, Houston, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, Vancouver, New York, etc… like no other. Hotel capacity: The week before the Beijing Olympics, Mexico City hosted The AIDS 2008 World Conference where we had twice as many participants as Beijing had athletes. I’d think that if you add some of these other HEAVY touristic dimensions, Mexico City, despite any reputation it has in different parts of the world for its good or bad, will most likely be left out by far of anyhing called an “emerging destinations list”.

By: Alex Gibbons

Alex Gibbons — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:10:43 +0000

So I came across this post via Twitter search. I really like how you’ve tweeked the index to measure something more meaningful. Plus I feel a little smug as I live in Budapest and think it’s great, certainly well deserving of its high position. Go Budapest!