Search results

The Spain–Portugal Cross-Border Cooperation Program launched the “Espomar” project in 2017, with the aim of designing a sustainable and transboundary maritime transport system in the Gulf of Cádiz, which includes the Spanish provinces of Cádiz (its Atlantic coast) and Huelva, together with the Portuguese region of the Algarve. This chapter limits the scope to the Algarve-Huelva connection and the resident population demand. The findings suggest a maritime connection defined and marketed as part of leisure activities. The demand for potential tourism packages created around boat trips appears to be promising. The sun beach, gastronomy wine and culture landscape vectors are the main attractors.

The Algarve is a region located in the South of Portugal and is mostly known for its sun and sea product. In order to strengthen the Algarve’s competitiveness, the Allgarve program was launched in 2007. We intend to analyze the importance of events as a differentiation factor of tourist destinations. Questions like loyalty, satisfaction, and perception about the event’s program are the main subjects analyzed. This study uses data from a questionnaire applied to 224 individuals who attended “street artist events” and pop music concerts in the 2011 edition of the Allgarve program. Two main techniques were applied: OVERALS and k-means. Despite its flaws, positive conclusions were reached, and after its five editions, the program was finally able to be linked to the region’s image, distinguishing it in a wide range of cultural events and entertainment.

This chapter examines how motivational and behavioral indicators influence overnight stays of international tourists in the Algarve. The method includes a first selection of the motivations associating with high heterogeneity over the years considered, followed by a correlation matrix to assess how tourists’ behavioral patterns relate with overnight stays. Behavioral patterns by year are defined based on motivations, socio-demographics, intentions, and lagged satisfaction. The correlation analysis was conducted using 15,542 observations collected at Faro international airport, from 2007 to 2010. The findings include 10 main motivations and reveal that these motivations are statistically different by country and over the years. This study contributes to the overall understanding of the dynamics of tourism demand.

Risk is a major concern among tourists and the objective of this chapter is to investigate how different factors contribute to the overall perceived risk and how novelty motivations moderate this risk. The sample population of the study consists of 4,057 international tourists on low-cost travel visiting the Algarve, Portugal in 2005 and 2006. The research findings show that the sensibility towards the occurrence of any type of risk vary with the tourist's age, familiarity with the destination, and travel experience as well as their propensity to seek novelty. Furthermore, it finds that younger tourists are more apt to be novelty seekers and, simultaneously, less sensitive to risk, than older tourists are. Familiarity with the destination derives from previous visits, diminishes the sensibility to the risk, and increases the degree of novelty-seeking. This chapter discusses specific managerial and theoretical implications.

Research on the quality of destinations has been developed from the tourists’ perspective, and a more holistic view is necessary for integrated destination planning. This implies cooperation among multiple stakeholders and the sustainable use of resources. The purpose of this study is to establish a conceptual model to measure the quality of destinations, considering the concepts of governance, sustainability, and tourist experience. According to the index, that used data from Algarve region, the performance of a destination depends on these three main dimensions, each one measured by a set of subdimensions that were weighted by an international expert panel. The result provides guidelines for transfer of knowledge to the main destination stakeholders.

This chapter addresses the issue of arbitration in tourism from the perspective of litigation. International tourism requires two or more legal systems to solve a given problem, which creates great complexity. To diminish this effect, organizations have been encouraged to use arbitration instead of courts, and thus, it is necessary to measure its effect on them. The analysis used the Biplot methodology, a multivariate technique in the context of reduced dimensionality. The results obtained indicated that tourism demand and supply were willing to pay for arbitration, but the latter erroneously considered the former unwilling to pay. This chapter suggests that tourism companies can raise the price of their products to increase their profit.

Destination marketing strategies are designed to attract visitors, inviting them to acknowledge and virtually experience the different resources available on site. Still, their success also depends on the ability of destination management organizations (DMOs) to develop an effective communication strategy. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic radically changed the goals set by the promotional campaigns launched by the Portuguese tourist boards. This study analyzes the textual content of the innovative promotional video campaigns released between mid-March and early April 2020 by Portuguese tourism authorities at national level (Turismo de Portugal), regional level (Centro, Algarve, Madeira and the Azores) and local level (Cascais) to promote these destinations during nationwide states of emergency. Since image is undeniably a key component of destination choice, content analysis approach was conducted using NVivo to measure the cognitive–affective image dimensions using a semantic differential scale. The results indicate that the campaigns conveyed inspiring messages of hope and trust to help restore tourists' confidence in their safety and emphasized the planning for future trips while aiming to reduce risk perception by highlighting that the destination is safe for travel. That way these campaigns are in close accordance with the literature focusing on corporate social responsibility applied to DMOs and image recovery strategies.

Higher Education institutions are complex but optimal organizations for innovation and creativity to grow and flourish. To achieve this, teaching staff should stimulate students’ active engagement in their own learning processes leading to transformative student learning. This chapter focuses on an innovative pedagogical approach, which has been consistently implemented for the last three academic years in the 3rd year module “Sport, Leisure and Tourism” within Sports undergraduate degree at the University of Algarve (Portugal). The case study method and reflective portfolio were used to create an authentic, enriching, and transformative learning experience for all students. These teaching, learning, and assessment methods are, within the context of the module, underpinned by experiential learning theory. Meta-reflections of 92 students’ portfolios showed their views about the entire process and their perception of skills they gained: (i) scientific and academic; (ii) professional; and (iii) intrapersonal and interpersonal. The innovative pedagogy presented in this chapter aimed to impact on students’ ability to understand and navigate through complexity – both in a teaching and learning environment and in a real organization.