Abstract

FONTANA, Rosislene de Fátima; GADOTTI DOS ANJOS, Sara Joana; LOPES GUERRILHA SANTOS PINTO, Patrícia Susana  and  DA SILVA ANANA, Edar. Tourist Destination Management: A Comparative Analysis between Two Consolidated Destinations in Brazil and Portugal. Estud. perspect. tur. [online]. 2019, vol.28, n.1, pp.01-20. ISSN 1851-1732.

The growth of the international tourist demand of the last years and the new demands of the consumer markets have pressed the tourist destinations, demanding of their managers the search for alternatives and new strategies to compete favorably on a global scale. Being the tourist destination composed by an amalgam of institutions and still, considering that the public and private organizations are groups that more influence in the management, analyzing their roles is an essential question for the understanding of the tourist activity in a certain destination. In this context, this study aimed to comparatively analyze the role played by public and private organizations in the management of consolidated tourist destinations. This was an exploratory-descriptive study, involving bibliographical and documentary research, aiming at delimiting the dimensions to be used, as well as interviews with public and private managers of both studied destinations: Foz do Iguaçu-Brazil and Algarve-Portugal. A structured questionnaire was used, with questions using a Likert scale. After the gathering, we performed the descriptive analysis of each destination and an Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) and the results compared between the two samples. The results showed that both Portuguese and Brazilian managers have very close perceptions regarding the importance and implementation of the analyzed dimensions related to the role of public and private organizations in the management of destinations. The similarities identified in the samples collected in different countries and realities are aligned with the Theory of Institutional Isomorphism, considering that the role played by public and private organizations is relatively similar in both destinations.

Keywords : Tourist destination; Destination management; Public and private organizations; Brazil; Portugal.