Redes de actores y desarrollo turísticoestudio de casos en Portugal

Abstract

An important volume of researches are showing the need of realizing analytical approximations to the study of tourism directly linked to its more basic territorial dimensions; this means, from the perspective of which it can be treated as an instrument of local development. This circumstance means, necessarily, to start with new analytical perspectives of the tourism that overcome the more traditional ones, that have developed analytical instruments that are not adapted to apprehend the tourism from this new perspective. The new analytical approximations find their theoretical main area in the concept of Productive Local System and its most essential point of interest in the actors who operate in the tourist activity of the tourist area studied. It is just in this line where is inserted the work here presented, since a new analytical model is introduced to approach the tourist study of the active management of the destinations, which puts the centre of attention in the tourist actors of the territory and in the relationships that are established between them to promote the tourism in the above mentioned territory, using for this purpose new techniques of reticulated analysis based on the Analysis of Social Nets. The case study is applied to three cases in the region of the Portuguese Alentejo demonstrating the correlation that takes place among the level of tourist development and the characteristics of the relations between the tourist actors.