Tourism Destination Competitiveness: Analysis and Strategy of the Miyagi Zaō Mountains Area, Japan
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Excellent Keep up the good work.Author Response
We appreciate your useful and helpful comments and suggestions.
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Reviewer 2 Report
Tourism Destination Competitiveness: Analysis and Strategy of the Miyagi Zaō Mountains Area, Japan
The author has made some modifications to the previous round of comments, but there are still the following problems:
(1) In order to ensure the preciseness of the paper, the author should avoid using the expression of "using TDC model for the first time" in the paper.
(2) Whether it is appropriate and representative to evaluate the competitiveness of tourist destinations with questionnaires from tourists and companies. Generally speaking, the evaluation of tourism destination competitiveness by experts in the tourism field is more convincing. At the same time, the author should also evaluate the competitiveness of destinations with objective statistical data.
(3) The author needs to explain the particularity of the application of TDC model in the evaluation of rural tourism destinations. There is no doubt that TDC model is a comprehensive model, which can be applied to the evaluation of different types of destinations, including both urban and rural destinations. In addition, this article is an applied research, and its theoretical contribution is still relatively weak.
(4) The author's evaluation of the elements in the TDC model is too simple. Does it need to consider the weight of each variable? At the same time, is the importance of tourists and enterprises the same in the questionnaire evaluation? The author only provides descriptive statistics, and the empirical measurement is too simple.
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Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors.
It was very interesting to see the great improvements in your article.
In order to be ready for publication you need to:
1 - Introduction - Second paragraph starts with a Tourism destination model which is not introduced before.
2 - Tables - All of them need to be revised in order to appear in the margins. All of them are cuted and missing text
3 - Maps should be in a better quality
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Reviewer 4 Report
The issue is interesting and topical, but the research issue, and thus the text of the article, is not fully thought out.
I propose the following aspects for improvement:
1. introduction of unambiguous sounding research assumptions: goals, hypotheses, research questions.
2. development of research methodology, eg. SWOT is a method. Used in strategic research, it was limited to only two elements of this method (SW); only the next two (OT) provide the basis for research in a strategic context.
3. the work has many editing defects, this applies to the entire text, the lack of, among others, line numbering, and also the redaction of tables and figures.
4. Not all of the subheadings used to organize the content are appropriate.
5. There is no Discussion and inference limitations.
Author Response
We appreciate your useful and helpful comments.
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Round 2
Reviewer 4 Report
I accept the scope of the introduced changes.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Attached
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
Congratulations for your article. It is interesting and shows a deep knowledge of the area in analysis.
In order to improve it I present some suggestions:
- Maps need to be changed in order to present a more clear image;
- The map should be in line with the text in order to be more easy to read and see the area at the same time;
- The type of graphic need to be changed as it is to difficult to read and understand it.
- The results presented in the graphic should have only % istead of the number of answers;
- You need to choose the more important results in order to create a graphic that is more readable and understandable. The item "Others" can join several answers with less responses;
- Table 3 and Table 4 can not be side by side has it is very difficult to read both; It is better to put under the text where the table is mentioned.
- Revise Table 7. It is too big for the Text. It need to be resumed. There are two black marks in the middle of the text that need to be deleted;
- Need some improvement in the explanation of the results of Table 7
- The figure 4 appears in the middle of Conclusions?!?!?!? Do not understand;
- The conclusions need to be improved;
- The references list need to be double-checked has some references are not in the text and vice versa;
Reviewer 3 Report
The undertaken research problem seems to be very interesting and important. However, the substantive level of the article still needs to be significantly enhanced.
Introduction - very short, does not add much to the research topic.
Theory - very modest, deals only with the issues of tourist destination, ignoring the issue of the strategy of its functioning.
Methodology - the research concept, research assumptions (goals, hypotheses, methods, research period) have not been clearly formulated. The study of the strategy of functioning of the competitiveness of a tourist destination solely on the basis of market research is a complete misunderstanding,
Research - figure 2 shows that the research covers the period 2005-2016. Why was the research not included in the following years 2017-2020? Figure 3 brings virtually nothing to the research, it is not known from what period these data come from. Part of the article (4), lines 173-198 are only generalities, no quantitative data whatsoever. The presentation of parts of the SWOT analysis in table 1, only S and W seems elementary and highly unsatisfactory. There is no information about the strategies of the analyzed tourist desigmentation to date.
Discussion - none.
Conclusion - only generalities. No significant specifics regarding the strategy for the development of the analyzed tourist destination.
Literature - very limited.
Reviewer 4 Report
The research uses the tourism destination competitiveness framework to explore destination tourism development strategies from the perspective of the supply side and the demand side. The conclusions have practical implications for the destination to maintain competitiveness, but there are still the following shortcomings.
First, the author could emphasize the importance and theoretical background of this research in the introduction section, as well as propose the potential knowledge contribution. It is not enough to describe the research purpose in the introduction section.
Second, existing literature reviews are just enumerating what the previous studies have done, without summarizing and collating with the research purpose.
Third, the authors spends lots of time introducing case sites (Miyagi Zaō Mountains Area), such as geographic location, tourism development, labor structure, tourism resources, and government actions. Although these contents are important, they do not need to be described in detail.
Fourth, the authors did not attach the questionnaire and its literature basis. The tourism destination competitiveness framework adopted has not been clearly clarified as well. In addition, the sample number of tourists is 142 and the sample number of company employees is 51, indicating that the sample size is too small. Are the conclusions drawn representative? Conclusion are limited to descriptive analysis of the data, and the value of the conclusions obtained is limited.
Fifth, the authors could compare the research conclusions with the findings of previous studies in the conclusion section, so as to clarify the theoretical and practical implication of this research.
Reviewer 5 Report
Thank you for your effort and congratulations! To ensure sustainability, I suggest the authors to incorporate the views of local communities in addition to visitors and local tourism companies.