The latest UNWTO research points to Tourism as the second most globalized sector, second only to the financial services and operations sector. The globalization of Tourism is the result of factors such as: the increase in the liberalization of world trade; the incorporation of new technologies; the horizontal and vertical integration of tourism companies and the territorial diffusion of consumption.
Globalization is a process that now seems irreversible and, like any socio-economic organization, it has its own rules, some encouraging the advancement of all agents subject to its hegemony, distributing benefits and ensuring medium and long-term prospects.
Other rules are limiting, excluding and forcibly unfair when they restrict free market competition or concentrate economic capital, making the poor even poorer.
(Lecture given in October 2013, at the Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave -IPCA - Barcelos -Portugal). In general terms, therefore, we can say that globalization is marked by the following characteristics: continuous integration of the world economy; increasing inequalities between countries and regions; international and interregional disparities;
freedom of action and wide opening of the economy. To accompany these changes, business management cultures configure emerging paradigms to make the administration of the company congruent with social and market trends.
The concentration of efforts and managerial capacity in the tasks of elaborating service delivery products has surpassed promotion and sales actions, which do not lead to an increase in competitiveness. In business cultures, the permanent development of employee skills and competencies is valued in line with the business mission and market requirements, in an effort to identify and build competitive skills, qualifications and re-qualifications that favor the performance of the company in a future scenario.
The policy of a given social group allows the design of an ideological and institutional framework for Tourism. This frame of reference for tourism management is expressed through a policy that, for the development of tourism as a harmonious, competitive and sustainable sector, must be the product of the active participation of the majority of the actors involved in the productive and diversified scenario of the locality.
The construction of a tourist destination that favors environmental diversity and cultural heterogeneity necessarily requires actions that work on the social learning of residents around tourism knowledge. Participatory strategic planning has an emphasis on the spontaneous and participatory informality of the local community, therefore it requires a systemic project that integrates the public power, private initiative and the third sector for the configuration of Tourism governance.
The benefits of this management and planning group must be diffuse, decentralized, not only directed at local and foreign entrepreneurs, with leisure practices and hospitality as their centrality. It is verified that communities with high social capital expand their capacity to reflect, plan and act in a supportive and entrepreneurial manner in a network, since social capital is a set of collective memories that empower collaboration and the undertaking of collective actions of a systemic and supportive nature.
Networks of social and economic-business relationships in which actors extract resources and advantages should be understood as multipliers of other forms of financial, cultural and symbolic capital. The implementation of a planning process, whether at the national, regional or municipal institutional level, must be conceived as a process inherent to the exercise of citizenship, whereby the population must feel part of the process, sharing decisions about the management of the community in which they are inserted with effective participation and social empowerment.
This is the opposite view to the dominant one in our society, according to which planning is an eminently technical act carried out by specialists in charge of preparing diagnoses, making top-down proposals and prioritizing them. This technocratic approach means the marginalization of citizens from decisions. A conception of participatory strategic planning presupposes that the community, based on their experience and daily life, has the conditions to indicate alternatives for the management of public affairs.
This presupposes their instrumentation to overcome the empirical perception of reality and advance towards having global knowledge of local or regional needs. We must remember that the autonomy of communities can only be truly achieved through social participation in the regional decision-making and construction process, guaranteeing rapid adaptation to the constant changes arising from global dynamism.
This participation is, however, a slow formative process, a recovery of the capacity to organize and build a region. Tourism is a prominent sector of international trade, if we consider that the total income from this globalized activity exceeds that of most other economic sectors. The Tourism production network is much more important than the production of the primary and secondary sectors in terms of participation and economic activity.
However, Tourism is a highly vulnerable sector, which depends on a series of factors, many of which are beyond the control of the State. Global events can lead to a scenario of Tourism retraction, related to international politics, geological risks; meteorological, epidemic and pandemic; social unrest; operations in transport and communications modes; fuel price, high oil price; fluctuations in the economic situation, exchange rate and political and religious terrorism, which seems to be worsening in Europe. All of these in isolation can have a harmful effect on the performance of the activity and threaten its growth rate.
Tourism is probably the only service sector that provides concrete business opportunities for all nations, regardless of their level of development. Hence its great market potential. Considering these characteristics, Tourism translates into an important driving force for global economic growth and development. Tourism can also act as a major driving force in efforts for social inclusion, income generation and distribution, and the generation of direct and indirect jobs. The current picture of the world economy drives us to three main aspects: In the economic plane: globalization and the consequent international competition. In the social plane: regionalization, even as a response, to the effects of economic globalization that force countries to reduce their costs and get out of welfare and, finally: In the political plane: decentralization, as each country or block of regions needs flexibility to arrange its factors of production and become competitive.]
In this global dimension, which countries or regions would stand out? Those who manage to articulate their productive systems with high levels of competitivenes s in global markets.
The countries and regions that manage to plan their tourism potential, institutionalizing public-private partnerships and alliances as powerful instruments to achieve the desired articulation in productive cooperation networks, will consolidate sustainable development and significantly expand their export agenda.
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