87 (IN)FORMAL PERCEPTIONS AND ARGUMENTS ON TOURISM GOVERNANCE MULTIFACETED CONCE
87 (IN)FORMAL PERCEPTIONS AND ARGUMENTS ON TOURISM GOVERNANCE MULTIFACETED CONCEPT – Contributions by Maria do Rosário Borges
My initial steps towards the approach to tourism and governance concept and issues
It was whilst attending my degree in Tourism Management and Planning (1990-1995), at the University of Aveiro (Portugal), that I developed a particular motivation to study tourism issues related to international institutions and sustainability, public policy and planning. Two authors inspired me significantly at the time, Edward Inskeep and Colin Michael Hall. Issues of sustainable development seemed inseparable to those of international policies and collective engagement, subsequently, in the early 1990’s, my interest began to focus on the international dimension of tourism. Years later, I had the opportunity to share, through a book chapter (Borges, 2007), my first reflections on the concept of governance and the network of actors in Portugal engaged towards sustainable tourism. At that time, the concept was still hardly investigated in the area of tourism, especially in Portugal where there was a lack of empirical studies on tourism governance concerning the tourist destinations. As so, expectations for future investigation regarding its theoretical and empirical relevance were very promising.
As part of my doctoral thesis, I found a good opportunity to start a more in-depth investigation in the knowledge area where governance, tourism, sustainability and destination management go interwine. In this way, I carried out a thesis entitled “Governance for the sustainable development of tourism destinations: The case of the Alentejo region (Portugal)”. The investigation focused on the design of a public governance model for the sustainable development of tourist destinations, grounded on the existing recommendations of international organizations (Borges, 2016). Based on Valentina Danica’s research into these matters (2006, 2009 e 2013), exploring the perspectives of international institutions recommendations on public governance for sustainable tourism became a very interesting arena of investigation to me. The empirical study was developed in two levels. On the first, I organized an international panel of experts to select the most relevant documents at a global level for the purpose of the study and, from that point on, new horizons opened up with this international new integrated vision in developing synergies, at different scales, for good public governance. A theoretical model based on international recommendations was developed, and on the second level the empirical study was focused mainly on the perceptions of Alentejo region stakeholders (public sector, private sector and civil society) regarding the requirements needed to develop a governance framework to improve sustainable tourism at the Alentejo destination level.
Has the political discourse been demagogic when using the eclectic governance concept? My current (in)formal percepti