USAID BIZPRO Project: Competitive Assessment of Tourism Crimea (Ukraine)

What: The USAID-funded Economic Growth through SME Development contracted us to conduct a competitiveness assessment of tourism opportunities in the Crimea.

The assessment was designed to determine the competitive position, strengths and weaknesses vis-à-vis major competitors, identify options for enhancing competitiveness (gaining market share, raising productivity/return on resources employed), and outline an action program to strengthen the respective clusters. The clusters comprised competing providers of tourism services as well as other enterprises in their value chains. A particular concern of the assessment was opportunities for adding value, raising the productivity of both capital and labor employed by the tourism cluster that demanded concerted action, such as building better “brand” position through joint outreach programs, raising service standards, improving training programs, or addressing weak links in the tourism value chain.

Using a range of analytical techniques — value chain analysis, Porter’s diamond, SWOT analysis, etc. — the assessment benchmarked the tourism cluster in Crimea with respect to applicable standards.

The work built on existing assessments and insights from stakeholders, the analysis related economic performance in terms of both Ukrainian and international tourist arrivals and spending to the results of the benchmark analysis. These relationships were used to explore the possible gains in total value added for the Crimea from efforts to strengthen weak links and reduce transaction costs in the value chains and improve the competitive position in global and regional tourism markets. The study also addressed the costs and feasibility of bringing such efforts to a successful conclusion.