Tourism has become so significant in economic and social development today; it is so significant in economic and social development having been called “the invisible export sector”. Tourism provides multiple opportunities for growth and improved livelihoods. Tourism diversifies exports, triggers infrastructure improvements, and is a beacon for pro-business policies. It benefits women and young people and contributes to poverty alleviation. Tourism generates income for biodiversity conservation and cultural heritage protection. Tourism can also change perceptions of a country enhances investor confidence, increases national pride, and serves as an engine of growth. It combats dollar deficiency. It also contributes towards distribution of wealth to the economy.

However, the tourism sector is complex. For economic growth and sustainability, it needs to be well managed. For the sector to secure the benefits that it deserves to, continuous reforms and action plans should be put in place. When poorly managed, not only a country will lose its potential benefits but its cultural and natural assets can also be deteriorated, crime can increase, women and children may be mistreated, and economic benefits may leak out of the economy. The question comes what drives STC.

The world’sargument in STC is very wide, running from standard composition of thesis papers to political speeches and to making professional proposals. In spite of the efforts to get exhaustive list of the determinants, several competing viewpoints have been provided by many scholars. Then, one might begin to suspect that there is no point at which this process of varied viewpoints will come to an end. However, the world cannot keep doing experimentation forever. Therefore, a point comes that one wants to melt the whole idea into shortlisted critical variables. Needless to mention that it is a bliss to have everything that matters for STC, it is practically impossible to have everything at disposal. The best way to melt it down is through classification, as one cannot do science without classifying the components of a system; one has to embody all the data and all the knowledge into a working model by scaling the disconnected points down to classified platform for implementation.

Enhancing STC as prescribed by many literatures demands a high level of budget and resources but it is dictated in this paper that there are some areas that can play as a leveraging role with a mind of reducing waste and managing scarcity. These leveraging areas are stated in this paper as Entry Points for STC. Given the scarcity of resources, it is rational and wise that efforts should be accumulated and put on leveraging subsectors so others can be transformed along with in the process. A question posed to be debated here is what should be included in the entry points.

Numerous studies highlight a bunch of competitiveness indicators. Yet the same studies never provide entry points of competitiveness in a case of scarce resources. Such entry points are unpronounced topic both in the academics and state agenda which are found to be the missing or/and inadequate toolkits of enhancing STC which posed the interest of the current endeavor.

In this paper, therefore, two catchall entry points with their own generic premises are presented and discussed in detail. They are Institutional Capacity and Sustainability.

General objective

To get a condensed entry points view of the wide world argument on STC through logical analysis.

Specific objectives

• To melt the whole idea of STC into shortlisted entry points of classified components.

• To show the competing viewpoints of the postulates and their counter logical arguments in clear lines of sequential ideas for experimentation.

Needless to mention that it is a bliss to have everything that matters for STC, it is practically impossible to have everything at disposal and this paper is proposing a premise that nations cannot afford to implement the exhaustive list of the determinants of STC. Therefore, the paper argues that it is necessary to melt the whole idea into shortlisted critical variables. The best way to condense it is through classification, as one cannot do science without classifying the components of a system into a working model by scaling down the disconnected points to classified generic entry points. Hence, this paper has classified the whole lot of lists into leveraging areas so others can be transformed along with the process. These leveraging areas are stated in this paper as Entry Points for STC. They are Institutional Capacity and Sustainability. These catchall entry points with their own specific subpostulates, the competing viewpoints and the logical appropriation of the arguments for experimentation in the eye of science are discussed in detail with clear lines of sequential ideas.

At the end of the classification of STC, it was found that all the determinants of STC could actually fall into two broad propositions. They are provided one after the other in the following;

Premise 1

Central to all behavioral problems are structural problems and central to all behavioral successes are structural successes.

Competing view 1

Behavioral problems or behavioral successes can bring structural problems or structural successes, Bhardan [1].

Counter defensive argument

The strength of predicting the outcome is quite greater in the former premise.

Conclusion 1

Therefore, institutional platform is a target point where one can make a meaningful diagnosis of any organizational problems or bring about desired outcome.

Premise 2

There is no such thing as natural common goal in organizations unless the employees are the owners as well.

Sequence 2

Public tourism institutions are not owned by individuals.

Conclusion 2

Therefore, employees of public tourism organizations have no natural common goals.

Iterations 2

Hence, it is institutional capacity that creates a platform of systematic common goal in the absence of natural common goal. It is institutional capacity by creating web of control between people with diverging interests that serves as both assembling forum and as a bank of collective expertise. Institutional capacity is generally a tool to shape the behavior of people towards seemingly common goal.

Premise 3

At institutional level, the means predominantly determines the goal.

Competing View 3

At individual level, “The goal determines the means” kind of philosophy may work, Coase [2].

Counter defensive argument

The goal of the institution may not be the goal of the individuals in it, and rather the means of the institution are quite often times the target areas for meeting the goal of the individuals within it. Therefore, the means of the institution, which are quite often times the goal of the individuals, define the end outcome of the institution by creating a common denominator of aligned purposes. The means of tourism institutions to have certain outcome in the sector are the systems and frameworks.

Conclusion 3

Therefore, the capacity of these systems are detrimental for tourism institutions to have a certain desired outcome using the individuals within it.

In this article, the terms “institution” and “organization” are used interchangeably to mean the process of endeavoring for a certain outcome by a group of individuals for “seemingly” common goal and the policies, procedures and rules developed to make an organized system.

The overall philosophical ideology of this paper regarding STC is led by institutional economics school of thought, which is discerningly calculated with an entirely cerebral reason. A nation might have everything that matters for STC, but it is practically impossible to have everything at disposal. Part of the reason is that wants are unlimited and the means to satiate them are scarce. Therefore, to reap maximum yield, division of the limited resources according to their respective leveraging role is the best. Hence, the “Institution first” theme of this study has to be seen in accordance with this philosophical belt.

To weigh the soundness of the proposition, it is important to prove it point by point; To start with a first supportive argument to the postulated premise, it is not often that a tourism destination that has failed institution with unclear processes of management and development would shine in competitiveness. If the makings of an institution have no groundwork, it would ultimately get the institution to nowhere. However, if an institution is structurally strong, that strength per se would supply any lack of soft capabilities. It is also easier to remake a behaviorally weak institution strong than to reverse a structurally failed institution into its halcyon momentum. The bone is marginally more detrimental than the flesh and blood. If this bone is well established, any behavioral discrepancy between desired condition and current condition can be easily bridged.

The second supportive argument for the proposition that the capacity of institutions are quintessential for STC is in favor of prioritizing the structural change before behavioral change. One guiding premise for this argument is “Central to all behavioral problems are structural problems and central to all behavioral successes are structural successes”. Well, of course, behavioral problems or behavioral successes can bring structural problems or structural successes. However, the strength of predicting the outcome is quite greater in the former premise. This is one reason that institutional capacity should come first.

The fourth point is that institutional capacity in tourism, in short, means developing long-term strategic road map of tourism and enhancing favorable implementing modality that start from the top (Policy level). Tourism policy is an initial direction pointer to all the activities the tourism institutions endeavors in a given economy. Policy dictates philosophy and inclination towards a goal. The institution’s initial inclination defines the outcome of the tourism sector as it defines the direction and level of energy the institutions put in their endeavor.

There are a lot of theories that dictate how to sustain competitiveness of tourism. Despite all these words of prescription about STC, very few initiatives have been successful. What are the reasons? There are only three reasons for failure in a given initiative. One, when there is a missing element in the way we philosophize or think from the start (Policy); second, when our implementing modality and platforms do not cope with our initial thought (problem of integration of both vertical and horizontal) and third when there is missing capacity to implement (Finance, stakeholder coordination and Knowledge). Failure can also happen when, three or two of them happen together. “The quality of institutional design is central for the success of any organization” is the foundation premise in prescribing institutional capacity to lead the STC. One general truth about what makes developed economies developed is their institutional capacity and development efforts fail because of the lack of strong institutions. Therefore, institution building is a catchall concept, which can serve as entry point with a leveraging role and make other important objectives be accomplished along with the process. Institutional platform is a target point where one can make a meaningful diagnosis of any organizational problems or bring about desired outcome.

Therefore, designing tourism institutional platform that has a clear system for horizontal and vertical policy integrations in the economy with a pragmatic structural philosophy is of unparalleled benefit for the long-term desired outcome of the tourism sector. This means that the overall philosophy in this paper of making successful initiatives in STC revolves around capacitating the institutions from the start of policy to the technical guidelines and rules.

The logical sequence of the argument for the premise “Institutional Capacity Should Come First” continues by explaining what it means by institutional capacity when broken down into what it means by institutions and capacity and the meaning they give when they come together.

Institutions are systems of coordinated and controlled activities where any task is embedded in a hard-wired complex network of technics that have a collective goal.

Capacity is measurable ability of an entity to do something with certain level of quality over acceptable period, Ensminger [3].

When the two words come together, they form a wide concept called institutional capacity. Institutional capacity can generally include, but not limited to; the visions and objectives that institutions have, the competence or skills, attitudes and knowledge embedded in the inhouse expertise, the physical and financial resources, implementing, and controlling structures.

Institutional capacity cannot be separated from the political and social system within which it is embedded. Institutional capacity has, therefore, three generic issues to address.

Institutional Universe (societal level), Institutional entity (organizational level) and the people within the entity (individual level).

Building up the Institutional Universe where the institution operates at societal level should come as one fundamental task in developing institutional capacity. Institutional Universe is about driving the macroeconomic and sociological landscape or structure of a country. It is about studying the behavior of the host community and its implication in an institution. The capacity of an institution is the reflection of the capacity of the host community. Therefore, in order for one to capacitate one’s institution one should capacitate the community where one interacts daily and fetch labor. Hence, it is imperative that one connect the elements of the society with the elements of one’s institution.

At Institutional Entity Construction Level, it is about sowing one’s priorities in well-designed directives, policies and frameworks. It is about designing hard or tangible organizational capabilities. It is constructing the tangible elements of an entity such as facilities, organizational structure, systems, legal frameworks and policies. Generally, it is all about the making and enforcing of critical rules and laws, improving administrative systems that can avoid malfunctions in the structure of institutions.

The Institutional capacity at people level is about the soft capabilities, which are commonly called the intangible capabilities. They are knowledge and skills related capabilities like experience, creativity, comprehension, social cohesion, motivation, habits, institutional culture, capacity to learn and adapt of individuals.

Institutional capacity strengthens if it promotes and balances both the soft and hard capabilities. It is about integrating people’s behavior with system’s behavior. Peoples of an organization have varied goals in the organization they are working for. Some have an elapsing goal of making the organization successful, others intend to cheat the organization in short time and leave and still others use the company as parking or waiting lot until their personal dream come true. There is no such thing as natural common goal in organizations. It is institutional capacity that creates a platform of systematic common goal in the absence of natural common goal. It is institutional capacity by creating web of control between people with diverging interests that serve as both assembling forum and as a bank of collective expertise. Institutional capacity is generally a tool to shape the behavior of people towards seemingly common goal. Institutions after carefully designed from the start guided by strong policy and implementing platform with their guidelines, tools and technical solutions can define the behavior of a people towards the institution’s interest. After all the behavior of people whether it is on the supply side (institution) or the demand side (tourist) is the result of the past, regulations, values and moralities. Therefore, one still have the same opportunity to divert peoples’ behavior to the interest of the next generation through strong framework of policy integrations with new regulations, values and moralities.

In order to bring about STC, the institutional effectiveness of the public tourism sector is quite vital. The degree to which public tourism institutions can harness their resources to maintain STC depends upon the clarity of their objectives and the institution’s capacity to set priorities and develop a framework for its implementation.

Institutional capacity of public tourism organizations can be driven through the following three spheres which may not in fact be comprehensively exhaustive;

Intra-institutional soft capabilities 1: In-house expertise

This is about setting up continuous improvement on the learning curve of the internal staff through partnering with knowledgegenerating institutions like Universities and consulting firms. Besides to this, it comes about conducting central upstream studies with their own clear mode of dissemination by developing knowledge sharing platform like internal databases or institutional memory, libraries, and documentation centers.

Here one very important point public tourism institutions should combat is long-term institutional stagnation or decay. Long-term institutional stagnation occurs when institutions lack dynamism and fluidity because of over fossilization of labor. Institutions fossilize when the retained-new blood work force ratio is greater than one. It means when the number of internal recruitment and promotion is greater than the number of external new blood acquisition. This creates institutional stagnation where structural changes are rare, ideas are exhausted and no more new idea is flavored into the work system. Therefore, this balancing of in-house expertisecontributes to the entry point of STC and drives leveraging role through institutional engineering of the public tourism institutions.

Action items on in-house expertise

• Make HR audit. HR includes not only academic commentators but also practitioners.

• Improve the learning curve of the internal staff through partnering with knowledge-generating institutions

• Build Knowledge capital and knowledge sharing platform.

• Combat institutional stagnation or decay (lack dynamism and fluidity)

Intra-institutional Hard capabilities 2: System development

The core driver of institutional capacity for public tourism institutions is institutional system. An institution’s system is a whole sum of relationships between parts, which are made up lines of command, division of labor, and areas of specialization.

System development demands to first consolidate the overall objective of our institutionsand bringing together all our deliverables into a single whole arena of policy. For the public tourism institutions, this should start at higher governmental level rather than at grassroots level as the charters and the policies are the basis on which transforming institutional capacity should take place. Parts of the system development instruments are legislative and regulatory instruments like laws and directives, standards and procedures.

These integrated systems should be designed in a way they can sustainably persist by studying the functional appropriateness of internal structures and their control mechanisms.

Action items on system development

• Set a one generation objectives of our STC with their own KPI, deliverables, cascaded into years

• Incorporate futurities to avoid fossilization and predict intergenerational values.

• Revise the functional appropriateness of structures

• Revise our existing orthodoxy thinking about institutional capacity

• Create both vertical and horizontal platform that integrate into the overall policy of tourism (vertically) and other policies like agriculture, health and security (horizontally).

• Prepare guidelines and technical solutions and mainstream it to tourism stakeholders.

Inter-Institutional soft capability: Stockholders management

Institutional capacity is also measured by how well the institutional arrangements of operation are matched with the context in which the institutions are embedded, which fosters that these institutional capacities can take root and flourish. This avoids fragmentation of efforts by fostering collaboration among all parties that have stack on the tourism supply chain such as the hotel sector, judicial and legal system, the media, knowledge generating institutions, and the tour and travel companies.

There are the following generic items of prescription on how to capitalize on tourism institutions’ capacity.

Action items on stockholders management

• The institutional arrangements of operation should be matched with the context in which the institutions are embedded

• Foster collaboration among all parties that have stack on the tourism supply chain.

• Implement, periodically follow-up, evaluate and improve the actions, revise the policies

Major premise 4

Many indicators of sustainability are indicators of competitiveness as well but some indicators of competitiveness are not indicators of sustainability.

Detail discussion on proposition number two

The second entry point of STC is enhancing tourism sustainability. The logical guiding postulate is; many indicators of sustainability are indicators of competitiveness as well. The most sustainable destinations do really have the most competitive tourism in the long run. However, some indicators of competitiveness are not indicators of sustainability. This takes us to the conception that it is not enough to talk about the multi-billion dollar worth of the tourism industry. The socioeconomic and environmental downside of the industry should be examined for sustaining the competitiveness of the tourism sector, which makes it one entry point. Tourism has multiple touch points for a given society both positively and negatively; tourism and health, tourism and wellbeing, tourism and economic life, tourism and life style, tourism and culture, tourism and wild life, tourism and heritage. Therefore, tourism that can’t enhance its own sustainability cannot bring about long term overall competitiveness.

Sustainable tourism development is a tourism development that meets the needs of the present tourists and host community without compromising the ability of future generations’ tourists and host community to meet their own needs on their time. It has the intent of reducing negative consequences of tourism development by taking restrictive measures on structural alternative to bring about economically, environmentally and socially acceptable holidays. Therefore, the idea of sustainable tourism is a widely pronounced idea across academicians and governments though there are no tourism anywhere in the world that can be described as sustainable in absolutely definitive way, rather as marginally more sustainable than others.

One example of the trends on tourism is its impact on the health and human costs of its host community. Tourism has the largest stack on the expansion of HIV AIDS. The link between tourism and HIV is increasing at increasing rate. The 4S tourism (Sea, Sand, Sun and Sex) is one of the dominant attractions in the world. A less sustainable tourist attraction, however, is the 4th S. The fourth S denotes “Sex” which attracts a lot of travelers who travel overseas in order to engage in sex with the locals. The values that tourists uphold in their countries do not often adhere to when they are in a holiday mode and as they think no one sees them when they multi-partner. In harbor of a foreign currency, many destinations see the movement of girls at night from their hide-outs into the streets, bars, and hotels where tourists go for a drink.

The health dimension is just one example. If left unmanaged, tourism has quit a lot of dark sides or down sides including diluting destinations authentic culture, deteriorating the heritages, destroying wild life and creating economic leakage. Hence, we need to have crystal clear combating mechanisms of the factors that hamper the long run sustainable competitiveness of tourism.

Therefore, the following generic principles of tourism sustainability should govern the tourism sector in order to enhance long run sustainable competitiveness;

Futurity rather than fossilization

As it cannot be said whether sustainable approaches designed today will really prove to be sustainable within 50 or 100 years, “sustainability” has to be taken to mean future-oriented requirement or forward looking approach and ever breathing concept across intergeneration rather than a fixed plan. Sustainable tourism should mean intergenerational managing change rather than stopping change. If we fix our ideas of sustainability for the future, it will lead us to fossilization or becoming inflexible or out of date. Not all the presents are right as not all pasts were right. We have to accept that even our idea of sustainable tourism may change overtime as technology changes. This means that the contents of sustainability indicators need to be redefined from time to time and that futurologists have to engage on considering future value changes and shift on resource bases to maintain STC.

Multi-sectorial thinking rather than uni-sectorial one

Tourism is one big system; some invest for the system, some control the system, some are the system themselves and some are victims of the system. The system is integrated through value chain or inter-stack and inter-sector integration.

As to the inter-sector system of integration, it should be understood that sustainable tourism cannot be separated from the wider debate about sustainable development. Tourism should be an integrated part of the Sustainable Development agenda of nations and organs and should include multilateral and multi-sectorial partners. It should involve a balanced mix of stakeholders. One attractive example is cooperation between tourism and health, tourism and intelligence or security. Therefore, the triple bottom lines (economic, social and environmental sustainability) should be touched through inter-sectorial integration.

As to the tourism supply chains system, it should be understood that tourism is a web of relationships where each component such as accommodation and transport seek to increase supply with different business strategies, business type and business behaviors. The components of the tourism supply chain have different nature, with different business structure, some with short run profit oriented, others long run profit objective which make it difficult to align interests and maintain sustainability. There, therefore, should be a common platform that guides the sustainable act of partners in the tourism value chain.

Sustainable supply

One side of the equation on sustainable tourism is sustainable supply. Here the tourism production pattern is quite detrimental. Well of course, it does not mean small-scale development. It just means balancing supply with formation. Regarding to formation, one mechanisms is developing diverse destinations as to scatter the impact of mass tourism to various attractions and ultimately making the negative impact minimal or less than its carrying capacity. This way, we need to make sure that our supply should be sustainably affordable by our formation.

There is this concept called feedback concept; where tourism development deteriorates the resources, the destination has both in qualitative and quantitative terms and the deterioration in the quantity and quality of these resources affects back tourism development. This is like killing your own life or destroying your own resource base. Therefore, to maintain STC, all impactful bodies including the academic commentators and government organs should work to prevent tourism from destroying its own base by supplying its own resources unsustainably.

Sustainable demand

Another side of the equation on sustainable tourism is sustainable demand. We should not limit our jobs only to the supply of tourism. Highest focus should be given to the doer of the action. Tourists are the doers of the action. When we say negative tourism impact, we are saying the impact caused by tourists. So, we should change tourists from consumers to ecologists, economists, anthropologists and philanthropists. Changing their attitude is priceless. If we can change and create a sustainable consumer through constructing the fence on the mind of the tourists, then the need for involving the government will be minimal. To do that the fence should be built on the mind of all the people in the world. All media should preach about sustainable demand or consumption. This way, we can control the short-term level of consumption to not exceed the long-termlevel of formation.

Tourism reverse innovation rather than standardization or glocalization

Tourism reverse innovation is to alter tourists’ test appetite into local authentic setting and not alter local authentic setting into tourists’ ordinary demand. It is to mean an innovation that is created in the place sold to serve global tourists. This is opposite to the idea of glocalization that an innovation is created in the global headquarters of companies to sale it in a local geographic location.

Tourism reverse innovation is to start in the locality with a more specialized creativity of own authentic settings which is a bottomup approach of selling tourism products. It is using an indigenous scientific rigor of knowledge and resource attributes with local context for global tourists.

Standardizing is changing into adapting products of similar and replaceable features.

Sequence 5

The whole idea about tourism is uniqueness.

If all the services that tourists buy at destinations are undistinguishable globally or no uniqueness, then there would not be any motive for tourists to go by far and experience the same product that they get at home. Therefore, standardization creates de-featuring, or modification and ultimately creates substitution of the local products in the name of standardization. This ultimately creates, especially in the long run, a routine experience replicated all over the world and deters tourists’ motives of searching unique experiences. Therefore, what STC demands is just a quality local product with local features, local authentic aroma, uniquely quality service of local specificities, and not of universally standard service or product that allows flow of innovation in only the opposite direction of the business as usual.

The standardization ideology, which is a top-down innovation, also shades the true inventiveness of destinations and propagates the development of identically undistinguishable products, which is the ultimate negation of the purpose of sustainable tourism and therefore should be reversed by bottom-up innovation or reverse innovation.

Competing view

Proponents for the idea of destination competitiveness seem to put lists of standards that a destination has to have so that it is to be a competitive one dictating destinations to comply with some standards, Scot [4]. While some professionals put their models of destination competitiveness to embrace both universal and local values in a way to negotiate between globalization and local cultures, loading global knowledge on local realities has always been the move, Sheng and Tsui, [5]. The idea of hotel standardization is the reflection of this perverse ideology.

The existing better move on this regard is the appreciation of simultaneity or the co-presence of both universalizing and particularizing product attributes which means having the global standards and maintaining uniqueness.

Counter defensive argument

There is no such thing as being universalizing and particularizing at the same time. It simply cannot happen that way, as they do not have ideological continuum. This is also hypocrisy. You either specialize or generalize; you either localize or standardize. They are negations to each other. Therefore, glocalization is hypocrisy or fake concerns of making tourism product appear more localized than it really is by attaching “local” labels on the product yet it is untrue. In the long run, glocalization turns into globalization and standardization changes into identically undistinguishable products. This is because of “Crowding out Effect”. Crowding out effect happens when global standards crowd out or push out local attributes to the level of nonexistent. It is highly political or colonial approach than technocratic field used as a realm of compromise voiced by colonialists to legitimize their agenda against the pro localism. Many destinations are victims of this flawed thinking, which cause them to lose their authentic quality of products that is in fact perpetuated by the low levels of maturity in the field of tourism.

Conclusion 5

Therefore, in order to secure STC Tourism Reverse Innovation should be put in place of Standardization or Glocalization. It is imperative to alter tourists’ test appetite into own local authentic setting and not alter local authentic setting into global standards, which is a bottom-up approach of selling tourism products.

The varied approaches arguing in STC is very wide, running from standard composition of thesis papers to political speeches and to making professional proposals. In spite of the efforts to get exhaustive list of the determinants, several competing viewpoints have been provided by many scholars. Then, one might begin to suspect that there is no point at which this process of varied view points will come to an end. However, the world cannot keep doing different trials forever. Therefore, a point comes that one wants to condense the whole idea into shortlisted critical variables. Even if a nation might has everything that matters for STC, it is practically impossible to have everything at disposal. The best way to work it out is through classification, as one cannot do science without classifying the components of a system; one has to embody all the data and all the knowledge into a working model by scaling the disconnected points down to classified platform for implementation.

Hence, this paper classifies the whole lot of variables of STC into two big entry areas; variables directly or indirectly related to institutional capacity and variables directly or indirectly related to sustainability.

One guiding premise for proposition of institutional capacity as one argument is “Central to all behavioral problems are structural problems and central to all behavioral successes are structural successes”. Well, of course, behavioral problems or behavioral successes can bring structural problems or structural successes. However, the strength of predicting the outcome is quite greater in the former premise. Institutional platform is a target point where one can make a meaningful diagnosis of any organizational problems or bring about desired outcome. Therefore, institution building is a catchall concept, which can serve as entry point with a leveraging role and make other important objectives be accomplished along with the process.

Hence, designing tourism institutional platform that has a crystalclear system for horizontal and vertical policy integrations in the economy with a pragmatic structural philosophy is of unparalleled benefit for the long-term desired outcome of the tourism sector.

The overall philosophical ideology of this paper regarding STC is led by institutional economics school of thought. It holds that if the makings of an institution have no groundwork, it would ultimately get the institution to failure. However, if the tourism institutions are structurally strong, that strength per se would supply any lack of soft capabilities. It is also easier to remake a behaviorally weak institution strong than to reverse a structurally failed institution into its halcyon momentum. The bone is marginally more detrimental than the flesh. If this bone is well established, any behavioral discrepancy between desired condition and current condition can be easily bridged.

At individual level, “The End Determines the Means” kind of philosophy may work. However, at institutional level, the means predominantly determine the end. This is because, the end of the institution may not be the end of the individuals in it, and rather the means of the institution are quite often times the target areas for meeting the end of the individuals within it. Therefore, the means of the institution, which are the end of the individuals, define the end outcome of the institution by creating a common denominator of aligned purposes. The means of tourism institutions to have certain outcome in the sector are the systems and frameworks. Therefore, the capacity of these systems are detrimental for tourism institutions to have a certain desired outcome using the individuals within it. Hence, the “Institution first” theme of this study has to be seen in accordance with this philosophical belt.

The other big classification of entry point is tourism sustainability. The logical guiding postulate is; many indicators of sustainability are indicators of competitiveness as well. The most sustainable destinations do really have the most competitive tourism in the long run. Besides, our today’s problems are our yesterday’s shortsighted solutions. We should not make shortsighted solutions today, as only these solutions will turn into tomorrow’s problems. Therefore, tourism that cannot enhance its own long-term sustainability cannot bring about long term overall competitiveness. To manage the long-term dark sides or down sides of tourism, five fundamental paradigm shifts have been proposed. They are; futurity rather than fossilization, multi-sectorial thinking rather than uni-sectorial one, sustainable supply, sustainable demand and tourism reverse innovation rather than standardization or glocalization. To weigh the soundness of the proposition, it has been proven point-by-point order of thinking by creating logical connections between premises in the main body of this paper.

These two big entry points of STC with their own sub-components demand universalizing their deeply held principles because one cannot do science without universalizing one’s principle. This will solve the puzzle of STC for the first time by addressing the very systematic and rigorous questions with classified theoretical simulation, which was a center of philosophical debate for centuries.