Composite indicator for the assessment of sustainability: The case of Cuban nature-based tourism destinations

This paper presents a methodology for building a composite indicator to evaluate the sustainability of nature-based tourism destinations. It combines Principal Component Analysis (PCA), the distance to a reference point, and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with the aim of addressing some of the objections related to the aggregation procedure. The synthetic index obtained is based on a representative series of sub-indicators of the concept of sustainable tourist development as outlined by the World Tourism Organization (WTO). We apply it to evaluate Cuban nature-based tourism destinations. The results identify the strengths and weaknesses of destinations according to sustainability, and serve as a guideline for tourism planning in the future. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.