Browsing by Author "Deus, Anita"
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- From the intentions to the reality: the real status of empirical knowledge in tourism destination management domainPublication . Dias, Francisco; Ramos, Dulcineia; Reis, Mariana; Dinis, Beatriz; Deus, Anita; Gomes, Gonçalo; Viana, Ana SofiaDespite the declarative consensus among tourism stakeholders regarding the importance of scientific knowledge as the basis for a competent tourism management, and despite the permanent discourses concerning the assessment of tourism impacts as the sine qua non condition to ensure a sustainable tourism development, the real situation seems discouraging and confusing: most of tourism destinations have not an observatory or a monitoring system composed of reliable indicators to assess the tourism impacts. In Portugal, for instance, aside from the statistical data provided by the accommodation sector and reported by the INE (Portuguese National Statistical Institute), the activity of other tourism sectors – tour operators, transports, restaurants, entertainment, cultural and sport activities, etc. – is not taken into consideration. At regional level, this lack of crucial data transforms the whole picture of tourism into a pale and almost fictional caricature. This circumstance not only makes impossible the assessment of the specific impacts of each of the various tourism products, but also hinders an efficient management of tourist destinations. The main goal of this paper is to highlight the paradox between the discourse and practice in this domain, and to propose a set of procedures to overcome it, since the exiting alternative – the so-called Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) – does not provide any valid input for tourism destination management at regional level. Using interviews with representatives of different tourism sectors as primary data, this study also sheds light on the tourism stakeholders’ points of view regarding the difficulties to operationalize a tourism monitoring system, and also on the best practices they suggest to deal with this issue.
- Monitoring tourism destinations: the challenge for a collaborative network: The case of SMATPublication . Dias, Francisco; Gomes, Gonçalo; Dinis, Beatriz; Reis, Mariana; Deus, Anita; Ramos, Dulcineia; Viana, Ana Sofia“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. This aphorism comes to our mind whenever we are concerned with the sustainable tourism planning and management of a destination. Indeed, without an efficient monitoring system engaging all stakeholders and covering all the tourism activities, it’s impossible to perform a rigorous assessment of tourism impacts. In order to achieve the twofold goals of tourism management is necessary to practice: competitiveness and sustainability. The goal of this paper is to present the Tourism Observatory of Central Portugal (TOCP) and the strategies used to surpass the most evident difficulties during the initial stage of data collecting process implementation. The relevant eight attributes to this Observatory can be described, namely by: the frequency of the barometers, the information availability, the reliability of the methods, the geographical and sectorial scopes, the usefulness of the produced information as a support to forecasting and innovation and the guarantee of a long-term perspective. Moreover, this paper describes the methods of data collecting, the functionalities of an online platform, the structure of stakeholders’ network and its coordination, and the relevant indicators that are assessed. Although the European Tourism Indicators System (ETIS) stands as the basic reference for the TOCP, some relevant adaptations were introduced, like for instance in cases when the official institutions do not have the statistical data required for the core indicators. In particular, the lack of statistical data seems more evident at local/municipal level. In consequence, the monitoring model described in this paper presents and discusses the approach adopted to deal with lack of statistical data. This approach consists of generating a rhizomatic and collaborative network of tourism stakeholders, each of them providing specific inputs to the monitoring system.
- The level of utility and trustiness of the statistical data provided by tourism authorities to the stakeholders of tourism industryPublication . Dias, Francisco; Viana, Ana Sofia; Deus, Anita; Reis, Mariana; Dinis, Beatriz; Gomes, Gonçalo; Ramos, DulcineiaWhen destination management organizations (DMO) are about to create (or adopt) a monitoring system for a continuous assessment of tourism performance in terms of sustainability and competitiveness, they face some crucial questions, such as: (1) what are the most relevant indicators in terms of its utility for tourism management?; (2) how many indicators have to be included to ensure a satisfactory coverage of all relevant aspects of tourism activity?; (3) what are the appropriate measures for each indicator and how get the necessary information?; (4) what are the pertinent sources of information? These and other related questions are considered as a preliminary step when introducing the monitoring system in tourism destinations. Aiming to get knowledge on this matter and to anchorage the empirical model of the Tourism Observatory of Center of Portugal (TOCP), a team of affiliated researchers of NID carried out a qualitative survey with a group of 40 tourism experts asking them a set of questions concerning the level of utility and trustiness of the statistical data are provided by tourism authorities to the stakeholders of tourism industry. Data analysis allowed us to identify the most relevant gaps regarding the quality of tourism information that has been provided to tourism decision makers, as well as to give some useful cues to improve the set of relevant indicators to be considered in the TOCP monitoring system.