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tourism cluster participants the tourist company cooperates with (0.774),
and the total number of innovations introduced (0.686). The fourth factor
can be interpreted as competitiveness of the firm as the variables associ-
ated with this concept have the highest loadings. It is positively correlated
with these three variables with correlation coefficients of 0.653, 0.774 and
0.686, respectively. Therefore, Hypothesis 1 is not rejected.
The innovativeness of tourism firms basically relates with the introduc-
tion and use of modern information technology in their work, and multiple
interactions among the tourism cluster actors result in competitive advan-
tages for the firms (Porter 1998; Camprubi, Guia, and Comas 2008), sup-
porting Porter's (1998) theory that in this case “1 + 1 ≠ 2.” Nordin (2003)
also claims that interaction and synergy arising from joint actions lead to
competitive advantages over the isolated actions of companies.
Hypothesis 2. There is a positive trend regarding the international com-
petitiveness of Kazakhstan.
As it is shown above, positive trends are observed for seven pillars out
of 14. Percentile ranks are above 50 for two pillars: health and hygiene
(the 6th) and ICT infrastructure (the 44th). Table 4 shows the change in
Kazakhstan's position in 2008, 2009 and 2011 relative to its position in the
year of 2007. As can be seen, the sum of positive changes is greater than
the sum of negative changes for 14 pillars of the Overall Competitiveness
Index for all years from 2008 to 2011.
TABLE 4
The Trend in International Competitiveness of Kazakhstan in 2007-2011
SUBINDEXES
T&T business
environment and
infrastructure
T&T human, cul-
tural and natural
resources
OVERALL
INDEX
T&T regulatory
framework
Overall
change
relative
to 2011
Change
relative
to 2011
Change
relative
to 2011
Change
relative
to 2011
Change
relative
to 2011
Percen-
tile rank
Percen-
tile rank
Percen-
tile rank
Percen-
tile rank
Year
2007
66
-1
65
19
65
2
73
-16
5
2008
70
3
47
0
74
11
86
-2
8
2009 69 2 45 -2 72 9 91 2
10
2011 67 0 47 0 63 0 88 0
0
Source:
The
Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Reports 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011. World Economic
Forum.
Authors' calculation
and interpretation of percentiles and their trends.
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