Manuela Guerreiro

The cultural offer as a tourist product in coastal destinations: The Case of Algarve, Portugal

Located in the south of Portugal, the Algarve is the most important Portuguese tourism destination. As with most coastal destinations, sun and beach represents the main tourist product. Previous research suggests that cultural products can add value to the core product of a destination, enhancing its competitiveness. However, few empirical studies have examined this premise in coastal destinations. Based on the responses obtained from a questionnaire applied to tourists visiting the Algarve in the Summer of 2007, this study shows that when tourists experience high levels of satisfaction regarding the cultural offer available at the destination they sense that the tourist experience expanded their knowledge and intellectual horizons. Then, the study shows that this feeling of “cultural enrichment” is a contributing factor to the willingness to revisit the destination. The study concludes by discussing the implications of the findings obtained in improving the competitiveness of costal destination.

Monitoring the Quality of Tourism Experience

The new economic era – the experience economy – that we entered in the XXI century is challenging the overall tourism industry and destinations to respond to visitor expectations in a radically different way, demanding a new vision on what is truly being delivered to them. Within the current era, tourism businesses and destinations, in order to thrive and compete globally, are bound to recognize that experience, not goods or services, are what motivates visitors to travel, repeat visits to the destinations and recommend it to friends and relatives. Being so, a research agenda for tourism development and quality should place at its centre the nature of tourist experience and meanings of quality tourist experience from the stakeholders point of view, so that the industry actors can take joint action supported by in-depth knowledge of meanings attached to experience. With few exceptions, in tourism related literature, quality tourism experience has been largely overlooked. However, tourist experience and tourism experience have been discussed by Clawson [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9] among others. Clawson[1] wrote about recreation experience; Boorstin[2] discoursed on authenticity in tourist experience; Cohen[3], [4] studied the phenomenological tourist experience frames; MacCannell’s[5] presented contemporaneous writings on tourist experience and authenticity. Pearce and Caltabiano[7] further extended consideration of traveller and tourist experience and authenticity with connections to motivations. Smith [6], Smith and Brent [8] addressed the interaction of host and guest in travel experience. Ryan [9] focused particularly on the ‘tourist experience’. Tourism and tourist experience past research have also focused on temporary and activity-based relationships [1] and some only on activity [10], [11]. Borrie and Birzell[12] presented four ways used to understand tourist and tourism experience. Those four ways include (1) meaningsbased[13], (2) benefits, (3) satisfaction[14], and (4) experience based means[4], [15]. Urry[16] introduced the notion of ‘gaze’ into considerations of tourist experience albeit ‘his gazes’ were challenged by Perkins and Thorns[17]. Although there has been considerable theoretical thinking on the subject, not much empirical research is available. One reason for this to happen is the multidimensional, complex and highly diversified nature of the tourist experience. Another reason is related to the fact that supporting constructs, namely satisfaction, quality and value, continue relatively ambiguous and are not always part of an integrated vision and consistent research. And yet, understanding of major and relevant dimensions of the tourist experience are of utmost importance to construct operationalization for effective experience management at destination level. The article proposes an integrated vision on how to monitor the quality of tourism in a mass tourism coastal destination – the Algarve (Portugal). While analyzing the quality of the tourism experience from tourists’ perspective represents the overall purpose of this paper, and the specific objectives are threefold. Firstly, the research intends to assess the tourists’ perceptions on the four dimensions of the experience destination, attributes and compares them with satisfaction felt in terms of the same attributes. Secondly, it expects to provide an overall assessment of tourism experience. Thirdly, the study proposes to establish the relationship between tourist satisfaction and the tourist experience and destination loyalty. The questionnaires were based on the work of Oh, Fiori and Jeong [18], after having been adapted to the Algarve tourist destination context, and refer to the four areas of the Experience Economy: Education (items a, b, c, d), aesthetics (items e, f, g, h), Entertainment (i, j , k, l) and Escapism (m, n, o, p). The last three items q, r, s – are related to memory and memories. To that end, a survey was carried out sampling 405 individuals. Of the 397 valid questionnaires obtained, 90% were answered by tourists from Portugal, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The results show about 95% of the respondents are satisfied and very satisfied. Approximately 95.3% of the respondents say they are satisfied and very satisfied with their stay in the Algarve. About the quality of lived experience, 77.3% classified very good and excellent. One of the important findings of this research is that the majority of the respondents (93%) intends to recommend the Algarve to friends and relatives. With this research, the team expects to contribute to a thorough understanding of tangible and intangible activities and attributes that form the underlying basis of the tourist experience in coastal tourism.