Testing the Feasibility of Tourism Resilience Indicators: Evidence from Slovakia

Abstract

International organisations such as the OECD have issued extensive indicator frameworks to guide the measurement of tourism resilience, yet these remain largely untested in practice and are typically conceived at the national level. Resilience, however, must be cultivated and contested at regional scales, where the effects of shocks and the capacity to respond are most tangible. To adapt indicators to local contexts and to identify both strengths and weaknesses, it is imperative to establish data structures and institutional capacities that can govern tourism development towards resilience. This study responds to that call by empirically assessing the feasibility of resilience indicators in the Slovak tourism ecosystem, emphasising the need for greater granularity in measurement and testing how far international recommendations can be operationalised at the regional scale. A survey of diverse stakeholders, including the Ministry of Tourism, regional and local destination management organisations, and university experts, evaluated forty-two resilience indicators across four criteria: relevance, data availability, interpretability, and feasibility. The analysis identified both robust and impractical measures and examined whether feasibility was determined by indicator category or by the characteristics of local data infrastructures. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, feasibility did not align neatly with thematic categories. Governance and economic indicators were not consistently more feasible than ecological or social ones; rather, feasibility varied sharply at the level of individual indicators. Seasonality, accommodation capacity, visitor numbers, and disaster preparedness were widely seen as both relevant and operational, while carbon emissions, inclusiveness, and insolvency rates were judged impractical. This demonstrates that feasibility is shaped less by abstract dimensions than by the availability and quality of regional data. The study provides the first systematic feasibility test of resilience indicators in a Central European tourism context. It shows that global recommendations cannot be transplanted wholesale but require adaptation to local capacities and infrastructures. Conceptually, it reframes feasibility as indicator-specific rather than category-bound. Practically, it offers a diagnostic framework for destinations to prioritise what can be measured now and what requires future development.