Project: The Impacts of the Euro 2004: Tourism and Image
Team: Fernando Perna (coord.), Maria João Custódio, Pedro Gouveia, Paulo J. S. Neves
Contractor: Direcção-Geral do Turismo (Portugal’s Tourism)
Execution time span: 2004/06

Communications:

Name: Euro 2004 Adepts Summary Report (in Portuguese)
Date: 29th October 2004
Local: Algarve's University (not published), Faro

Nsme: Euro 2004 Social Communication Summary Report (in Portuguese)
Date: 29th October 2004
Local: Algarve's University (not published), Faro

Name: Euro 2004: Tourism and Image (in Portuguese)
Date: 24th January 2005
Local: DGT, Real Palace Hotel, Lisbon

Summary:

This study aims to estimate the national impact of UEFA’s EURO 2004 on tourism sector, considering the country’s economy and image and the event organization, arising from the need to analyze the earnings in what regards to economy and destination image as outputs of this event. The expected main advantages are mainly the internationalization of external material benefits and incorporeal benefits related to the country’s visibility and to the different regions involved in this project.

The strictly economical perspective cross with the " Euro 2004 Economy" research developed by a Universities consortium led by the Economy and Management Superior Institute of Technical University of Lisbon and where Algarve’s University is also present.

The incorporeal perspective is centred on Centre’s handling and analysis of data extract from the questionnaire made to the 3,500 UEFA’s accredited journalists for the cover of Euro 2004, where it tried to verify if this event has contributed or not for a change of Portugal’s image assimilated from outside and in which measure, regarding the events organization capacity as well as a tourism destination.

The study also had questionnaires made in Lisbon, Porto and Faro airports to tourists who visited Portugal due to this event, in which it was tried to get their event’s opinion/image and about Portugal on a generic way, beyond questions related with their travel expenses.

Finally and on a crossed way it was also analyzed the Borders Inquiry data from National Statistics Institute, in its specific annex about EURO 2004, with the aim to verify the effects of this event on the visits to Portugal, in terms of tourist profile and economic output of a possible tourist-type associated to this event.

The methodology used for the execution of this study adopts the main proposed recommendations by the "Evaluating NTO Marketing Activities" (2003) guide, edited by the United Nations World Travel Organization and European Travel Commission, through a stocktaking work developed by the University of Luton.