Abstract
Over the past three decades, researchers have made significant progress to advance the understanding of destination competitiveness. However, due to the complex and multi-dimensional nature of the phenomenon, there are still several open and under-explored questions. This chapter aims to review the existing knowledge on destination competitiveness, identify research gaps and propose innovative solutions to advance destination competitiveness research and practice both conceptually and methodologically. The chapter provides an overview of common competitiveness theories, definitions, conceptual models and evaluation methods. It then outlines an agenda on how different levels of competitiveness theories can be combined with AIbased methods and Big Data and suggests how to advance future destination competitiveness research - and destination management practice.