INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM, TRAVEL AND HOSPITALITY LAW Competitiveness, as far as we are concerned, is a concept of comparison of the capacities and performance of a given company with another company, of a sector of activity with another sector of activity, of a tourist destination with another tourist destination or even of a country with another country. The concept of performance refers us, in turn, to a comparison between the results achieved and the results expected to be achieved. Here, as can be easily understood, we are within an organisation and unrelated to other organisations. This comparison will necessarily require the presence of monitoring processes of these results that allow their measurement. The performance and competitiveness in tourism have been widely studied, both in terms of tour operators and tourist destinations themselves. We do not intend to establish relationships between international arbitration and the competitiveness of the tourist destination. We intend only to evaluate the effects on the performance and competitiveness of the tourism company, be it a travel agency, a tour operator or a hotel, of the institutionalised and generalised use of arbitration as an alternative method of dispute resolution. We will ask, therefore, and in the greatest simplification that we can achieve, if in situations in everything identical in which the only variation is the use of arbitration, such differentiation brings or not a real benefit to organizations. Differentiation appears as a label for a wide range of strategies and allows, at the limit, the creation of something that is considered unique in the sector where the organisation is inserted. We will also seek to answer the question whether, even if at a marginally higher cost, the institutionalised adoption of arbitrage continues to bring benefits to organisations. As we said, it is not easy to find in the literature references linking arbitration issues with the competitiveness or performance of companies. Although arbitration is a subject of study of the legal science since its beginnings and since classical antiquity, the analysis of the advantages and disadvantages for companies of the use of this alternative method of dispute resolution have been successively approached from a strictly legal perspective, which necessarily reduces its scope and effectiveness. In the words of Drahozal “Although legal scholarship often has been criticised as being too divorced from empirical realities, numerous efforts – from hiring faculty with interdisciplinary backgrounds, to conducting training in research methods, to the creation of specialised journals – have sought to encourage and facilitate empirical research on legal issues”10. A large part of the root of this problem lies in the fact that arbitration awards are confidential, which makes it impossible, in practice, to empirically analyse 10 Drahozal, 2006, pag. 291.
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