Competitiveness and clusters in the portuguese tourism sector

• Autor(es): Estevão, Cristina Maria Santos
• Data: 2011
• Identificador Persistente: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/2632
• Origem: uBibliorum
• Assunto(s): Destinos turísticos; Competitividade regional; Tourism cluster; Portugal
• Tipo de Documento: Tese de doutoramento
• Idioma: Inglês
• Orientador(es): Ferreira, João José de Matos
• Contribuidor(es): uBibliorum

Descrição

Tourism has a truly strategic importance to any international, national or regional economy, together with the reasons that justify the immense interest in the area of clusters and their likely impact on the economic performance of companies, regional development and competitiveness of countries, seems to justify the fundamental need to investigate this issue. The discussion about clusters of tourism is still at an early stage, which explains the low number of investigations that address this problem. Moreover, taking into account the role that tourism and clusters have on the economic performance of companies for most countries, in general, and particularly in Portugal, we have identified, positioned and evaluated the economic performance of tourism clusters in Portugal. The competitiveness of tourist destinations is becoming increasingly important for countries seeking to control a large part of the growing tourism market, and this is particularly important for those who rely heavily on the situation in the sector of tourism and travel industry. Given the present statement of the problem under study, the following four questions are raised: What is the most appropriate methodology to identify clusters of tourism in Portugal? Where are the tourist clusters in Portugal? What is the positioning of the clusters against the economic performance of tourism in the region? And what are the factors that determine regional competitiveness? The present thesis aims to study the competitiveness and clusters of Tourism sector in Portugal. In this sense we explore the clusters of all Portuguese companies that make up the economic activities outside the satellite account of the World Organization of Tourism of the regional areas and tourism development poles in Portugal and make their respective mapping. It was empirically and consistently observed the identification and localization of 555 clusters spread over 10 activities related to housing, restaurant trade and animation. Therefore, we used a methodology based on the 2008 turnover of companies in Portugal, based on data from the National Statistics Institute (InstItuto Nacional de EstatÍstica - INE), distributed by regions and by economic activities, the results allowed to identify three distinct clusters - low, medium and high performance. We have done an empirical application of a conceptual model of competitiveness based on the proposed collection of primary and secondary data. The primary data used as a research tool is the questionnaire. Secondary data were obtained from the database of the Directorate-General for Research, Statistics and Planning of the Portuguese Ministry of Labour and Social Solidarity, and the National Institute of Statistics for the year 2009, including employment, number of establishments, area and number of inhabitants of the areas of tourism and tourism development poles in Portugal. Through the methodology it was possible to measure the competitiveness of tourist destinations, contributing to reduce the gap identified in the literature - the assessment of competitiveness of tourist destinations is still at a very early stage, and simultaneously contribute to understand the phenomenon of competitiveness in the context of tourist destinations.