Project: COMPETITIVTUR
Team: Fernando Perna (coord.), Pedro Gouveia, Maria João Custódio, Vanessa Oliveira
Contractor: CCDR - Algarve (Regional Coordination and Development Commission of Algarve)
Execution time limit: 2007/10

Conferência Internacional:
Tourism Competitiveness on Mature Destinations:
An Empirical Approach: 29 de Outubro de 2010

Papers:
Algarve Tourism Competitiveness Research - Fernando Perna, Maria J. Custódio e Pedro Gouveia
Destination Competitiveness an overview of some issues - Larry Dwyer.

Short description:

COMPETIVTUR was the name given to this study which is centred on the availability and debate of a technological platform for development of scientific knowledge on the tourism sector. This will have special appeal to the new technologies as supportive instruments to the planning and decision processes for territory and tourism in Algarve. It consists in a scientific coordination work with the purpose of following, debating and pointing out good practices on the extent of the regional competitiveness of Algarve tourism with the following aims:

1. a) To promote the economic growth of the regional tourism through innovation, market (outgoing) knowledge as well as by the development of new scientific data (the destination performance);
   
   
2. b) To define tourism regional competitiveness measure methodology aiming the development of a table of indexes and a contents which will be available on an on-line platform. The regional specialization of COMPETITIVTUR report, through a dynamic structure, is subject of evolution and pretends to support decisions and territory management;
   
   
3. c) To guarantee the articulation of the generated information about tourism competitiveness with the remaining matrices of evaluation which may be developed to follow the 2007-2013 Algarve’s Development Strategy and/or the Algarve Regional Operational Program for 2007-2013.
   

The analysis of the territory competitiveness will keep in mind the sector’s nuclear matrix to which will add data and routines about others tourist products, in a way of dominating the whole tourism sector competitiveness and not only a specific market niche. Assuming the need of grasping ex-ante possible behaviour changes on tourist demand, the analysis would not be complete without identifying what is the territory evaluation by the demand itself. This way, it is considered important to include on this model the image evaluation by the main outgoing markets to Algarve.