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From the intentions to the reality: the real status of empirical knowledge in tourism destination management domain
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Despite 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.
Description
Keywords
Knowledge Indicators Tourism impacts monitoring of tourism activity
Citation
Dias, F., Ramos, D., Reis, M., Dinis, B., Deus, A., Gomes, G., & Viana, A.S. (2017). From the intentions to the reality: the real status of empirical knowledge in tourism destination management domain. Proceedings Book of the IX International Tourism Congress (ITC’17), 29-30 November, Peniche, Portugal
Publisher
CITUR