CLUSTERING SILK ROAD COUNTRIES BASED ON COMPETITIVENESS FACTORS IN TOURISM INDUSTRY - Tourism in Central Asia: Cultural Potential and Challenges - page 207

The Member States currently involved in the Silk Road Program in-
clude: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, DPR Ko-
rea, Rep. Korea, Egypt, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria,
Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan (Silk Road Ac-
tion Plan 2012/2013, 2012).
Although there are 28 member countries, it is necessary to differentiate
among participating countries according to their different degrees of com-
mitment. Hence, three concentric circles were identified: The first circle
of the program consisted of the Turkestan countries that had just started
opening up their borders for tourism. The WTO's main effort is to prepare
these countries' action plans and training facilities and to formulate legis-
lation, frontier formalities, and statistics for the projected growth in tour-
ism. The second circle was comprised of countries that had already opened
up their sites of the Silk Road and had gained certain experiences with this
tourism product. These countries include China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and
Turkey. The third circle covered the terminals of the road on both ends
such as Japan, the Korean peninsula, ASEAN countries, Arab countries,
and Europe (UNWTO, 1998).
The Silk Road Program aims to develop a collaborative framework for
the Silk Road tourism and generate a sustainable and globally competitive
tourism product. In achieving this aim, the major activities projected are a
comprehensive marketing strategy and capacity building as well as creat-
ing a framework for Silk Road tourism. Realizing the Silk Road Program
requires comprehensive and successful tourism destination management
and marketing programs. Goeldner et al. (2000) pointed out that the two
major parameters of tourism destination management are competitiveness
and sustainability. For a destination to be successful these two parameters
must be realized. Neither of them is sufficient alone and both of them are
essential and mutually supportive. In this sense, the competitiveness of a
destination refers to its “ability to create and integrate value-added prod-
ucts that sustain its resources while maintaining market position relative to
competitors” (Hassan, 2000). By a similar token, “sustainability pertains
to the ability of a destination to maintain the quality of its physical, social,
cultural, technological and environmental resources while it competes in
the marketplace” (Goeldner et al., 2000).
Dwyer and Kim (2003) postulate that industry and governments can
increase the number of tourists, expenditures and economic impacts by