Margarida Custódio Santos - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Margarida Custódio Santos

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018

Following the precedent set by the Virtual Tourism Observatory run by the European Commission-DG ... more Following the precedent set by the Virtual Tourism Observatory run by the European Commission-DG GROW a few years ago, several initiatives have taken place to design and manage tourism observatories at both the transnational and local level. However, these initiatives do not yet seem able to provide adequate operational responses to the challenges that the Commission launched with the original VTO. While the opportunities offered by the Web 3.0 still do not seem to have been sufficiently taken advantage of, such initiatives also have not yet developed suitable methodologies to operationally include the tourism industry in the studies and monitoring performed by the OTs. This work presents an OT prototype including a participatory DSS (PDSS) designed specifically to overcome the aforementioned limits. The prototype was tested in 2017 on the entire eligible area of the 2014-2020 MED Programme covering 52 regions. The potentialities of this PDSS are shown through two case studies, one Italian and the other Portuguese.

Sustainability, 2020

This study sought to develop a conceptual model of innovative tourism product development, becaus... more This study sought to develop a conceptual model of innovative tourism product development, because the existing models tend to provide an incomplete framework for these products’ development. The models presented to date focus on either the resources needed, the tourism experiences to be provided, or development processes. These models also tend to see the overall process as linear. The proposed model gives particular importance to the development process’s design, as well as stressing a dynamic, nonlinear approach. Based on the new services or products’ concept, project managers identify tourism destinations’ core resources, select the stakeholders, and design transformative tourism experiences. This framework can be applied to innovative tourism products or re-evaluations of existing products in order to maintain tourism destinations’ competitiveness. Thus, the model is applicable to both destination management companies and the private tourism sector.

With a few exceptions, the traditional models that aim at identifying the factors that influence ... more With a few exceptions, the traditional models that aim at identifying the factors that influence the competitiveness of tourism destinations are very difficult to operationalise because they need a large number of indicators to inform the concepts. This paper presents a different approach that postulates that researchers should try to identify the specific factors that impact competitiveness of tourism destinations according to the stage of the destinations’ life cycle. With the aim of identifying these specific factors, an extensive literature review was undertaken, focusing in particular on the papers that explicitly recognised that the destinations under analysis in the studies were in the mature stage of their lifecycle.
From the literature review, we concluded that the specific factors able to negatively influence the performance of mature tourism destinations can be grouped into four areas. The first area concerns the deterioration of the destinations’ infrastructure; the second is related to the destinations’ management, namely the lack of a shared strategic vision among stakeholders; the third area is associated with the loss of economic vitality in the destinations; finally, the fourth area includes the impact of tourism development over the years on the territory, specifically social, environmental and cultural impacts.
The results obtained from the empirical study allow us to conclude that the lack of environmental problems, not being overdeveloped in terms of construction and having maintained authenticity are all perceived by tourists as more important for the competitiveness of tourism destinations than factors normally considered more relevant, such as prices and the quality of accommodations

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018

Following the precedent set by the Virtual Tourism Observatory run by the European Commission-DG ... more Following the precedent set by the Virtual Tourism Observatory run by the European Commission-DG GROW a few years ago, several initiatives have taken place to design and manage tourism observatories at both the transnational and local level. However, these initiatives do not yet seem able to provide adequate operational responses to the challenges that the Commission launched with the original VTO. While the opportunities offered by the Web 3.0 still do not seem to have been sufficiently taken advantage of, such initiatives also have not yet developed suitable methodologies to operationally include the tourism industry in the studies and monitoring performed by the OTs. This work presents an OT prototype including a participatory DSS (PDSS) designed specifically to overcome the aforementioned limits. The prototype was tested in 2017 on the entire eligible area of the 2014-2020 MED Programme covering 52 regions. The potentialities of this PDSS are shown through two case studies, one Italian and the other Portuguese.

Sustainability, 2020

This study sought to develop a conceptual model of innovative tourism product development, becaus... more This study sought to develop a conceptual model of innovative tourism product development, because the existing models tend to provide an incomplete framework for these products’ development. The models presented to date focus on either the resources needed, the tourism experiences to be provided, or development processes. These models also tend to see the overall process as linear. The proposed model gives particular importance to the development process’s design, as well as stressing a dynamic, nonlinear approach. Based on the new services or products’ concept, project managers identify tourism destinations’ core resources, select the stakeholders, and design transformative tourism experiences. This framework can be applied to innovative tourism products or re-evaluations of existing products in order to maintain tourism destinations’ competitiveness. Thus, the model is applicable to both destination management companies and the private tourism sector.

With a few exceptions, the traditional models that aim at identifying the factors that influence ... more With a few exceptions, the traditional models that aim at identifying the factors that influence the competitiveness of tourism destinations are very difficult to operationalise because they need a large number of indicators to inform the concepts. This paper presents a different approach that postulates that researchers should try to identify the specific factors that impact competitiveness of tourism destinations according to the stage of the destinations’ life cycle. With the aim of identifying these specific factors, an extensive literature review was undertaken, focusing in particular on the papers that explicitly recognised that the destinations under analysis in the studies were in the mature stage of their lifecycle.
From the literature review, we concluded that the specific factors able to negatively influence the performance of mature tourism destinations can be grouped into four areas. The first area concerns the deterioration of the destinations’ infrastructure; the second is related to the destinations’ management, namely the lack of a shared strategic vision among stakeholders; the third area is associated with the loss of economic vitality in the destinations; finally, the fourth area includes the impact of tourism development over the years on the territory, specifically social, environmental and cultural impacts.
The results obtained from the empirical study allow us to conclude that the lack of environmental problems, not being overdeveloped in terms of construction and having maintained authenticity are all perceived by tourists as more important for the competitiveness of tourism destinations than factors normally considered more relevant, such as prices and the quality of accommodations