Quality of tourism development from the perspective of local Portuguese public decision makers: a measure proposal

Abstract

Quality in tourism can only be comprehended by the study of tourism development intangible characteristics. Therefore this is an extensive, transversal and primordial thematic to take into account in the sustainable growth of tourism destinations. The analyses of these characteristics has led to a growing interest in comprehending how public tourism officers and the local community value tourism growth, which aspects they believe are the most important and how they perceive their involvement in the process (Boley, McGehee & Hammett, 2017). This paper intends to validate and analyse the psychometric properties of a measurement instrument, adapted to the Portuguese reality, which measures the public decision makers’ perception about tourism quality. This scale was applied to the Portuguese municipalities (N=125) and is organized in subscales or quality dimensions: development, economy, training, marketing and resources. The main goal of this article is to present the results of the subscale “development”, to which was verified that on a local level the perception about tourism quality in Portugal translates into Strategic Thinking, Governance and Innovation Policies. This said, we conclude that stimulating the continuous communication with public entities and involving them both in the planning process and in the definition/creation of tourism politics contributes to the tourism development. When allied to innovation, these are the necessary conditions to materialize in challenging actions the tourism development politics, to be implement by local entrepreneurs.