ASPECTS OF STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE COMPETITIVENESS AND PERFORMANCE IN TOURISM

The paper is composed of an introduction, in which the chosen theme is located in the context of statistical literature, a presentation of the ideas detached from the study of specialized literature related to the competitiveness and performance in the tourism activity, a succinct presentation of the calculation methodology of the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index (T&TCI), an analysis of the Romanian tourism competitiveness, as revealed by The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2007 and 2017, documents elaborated by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and a presentation of the conclusions and some future research directions that the paper can open. As a component of the Statistical Informational System (SIS) in tourism, the system of statistical indicators must respond to multiple requirements, including the description of the economical results of the tourism agent and the characterization of the economical results at the branch level. For this reason, within the system of indicators of the tourist activity are included groups of indicators such as: indicators of the efficient use of the workforce (indicators of labor productivity and quality of workforce in tourism), as well the indicators of economic efficiency in tourism, which characterize the resources (efforts) used and the obtained economic and social results (effects). The study of the specialized literature highlighted the concern for defining and measuring the competitiveness and performance of tourist activity, statistical analysis of these economic categories being complex, requiring the calculation and interpretation of the resources and results indicators subsystems. Competitiveness was defined by The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as being the measure in which a country can, under conditions of free trade and efficient market, to produce goods and services that resist on the international market, in the conditions of maintaining and even increasing real incomes of the population, in the long term. Competitiveness can be statistically measured by a single synthetic indicator or by a system of indicators. Thus, in order to measure competitiveness, the WEF 1994 recommended the use of the level and the increase of GDP per capita indicator. In the year 2007, the economic foundation located in Switzerland published the first Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report, in which was calculated the first T&TCI for 124 economies, including Romania. Also, the paper presents the indicators for the tourism competitiveness measuring proposed by the OECD in 2013. In the paper is analysed the Romanian tourism competitiveness in the world context in 2007 compared with 2017, as results from the reports of 2007 and 2017 on travel and tourism competitiveness, elaborated by WEF