Planejamento e gestão do turismo em âmbito regional : o caso da região do Vale do Rio Pardo/RS.

Abstract

This study aims to analyze how the process of planning and management of Tourism in the region of the Vale do Rio Pardo has repercussions on the development of the region. It’s understood that tourism is an activity that appropriates the territory, since it’s from it’s particularities that it develops. Promoting regional development from tourism allows a strengthening of relations between municipalities and their inhabitants and enables the generation of income and the preservation of customs, values and the history of the region. When we leave the region to make tourism feasible, we need to see that it is properly planned and managed, and that there is a strong horizontal integration between the entrepreneurs, the community and the public power. Based on these understandings, the following question was proposed as a problem in this research: how does the planning and management of tourism in the region of the Vale do Rio Pardo have repercussions on the development of the region? The specific objectives are centered on analyzing the organization of tourist activities in the region of the Vale do Rio Pardo; to analyze the influence of the territorial configuration of the region on the tourist activity; and understand the constitution and performance of the entities for planning and managing tourism in the region. The research was justified by the fact that it can provide an overview of how tourism is seen, planned and managed in the region of the Vale do Rio Pardo, and it’s possible to identify the potentialities of the activity in the region and the main obstacles encountered in the planning process. The phenomenological method was used to reach the proposed objectives and as research techniques the use of bibliographical research and semi-structured interviews with a person responsible for the Tourism Department or related to each municipality belonging to the region of the Vale do Rio Pardo, such as with a representative of the Conselho Regional de Desenvolvimento (Corede/VRP), a representative of the Associações de Municípios do Vale do Rio Pardo (Amvarp), a representative of the Associação de Municípios do Centro-Serra (Amcserra), with the Presidents of the Associação de Turismo do Vale do Rio Pardo (Aturvarp) and the Associação de Turismo do Centro-Serra (Aturcserra) and with the Associações Comerciais e Industriais (ACIs) of the municipalities associated with Aturvarp. The interviews were guided by three categories of analysis: tourism and regional development; territorial configuration and the perception of tourism in the region; planning and management of tourism. In the analysis and interpretation of the data was used the content analysis, understood by Bardin (1977), as a set of methodological instruments that apply to extremely diversified discourses. It’s concluded that regional tourism planning and management is practically non-existent in the Vale do Rio Pardo region. Even if potentialities are perceived, there’s still no tourism planning in each municipality analyzed, especially in minors. There’s, in some municipalities, the will to build it, but not concretized yet. Since there’s no planning at the municipal level, therefore, there’s no regional level and, from this, tourism activity does not yet have much repercussion with regard to the development of municipalities and the region.