Doing Tourism

There are three sets of key players in making tourism happen to its full potential. The first group is made up of private sector entrepreneurs. The second is made up of public agents at the federal, state and municipal levels. And the third, obviously, is represented by tourists. Each of these groups has a specific and relevant role to play in ensuring that tourism produces the expected results, namely, generating development, jobs and income.

The development of tourism also involves three crucial moments in which the roles of public and private initiatives need to be played harmoniously: structuring tourism, training the people involved and promoting tourism. Structuring involves ensuring that the destination has adequate infrastructure, such as access roads, airports, health clinics, police for tourist safety, etc. It also involves the existence of facilities such as hotels, restaurants, attractions, transport services, among others. Training has to do with preparing people to perform their functions in the various tourism activities. Promotion is the moment to give visibility to the destination and its attractions, seeking to attract the public.

Understanding these issues is the easy part of “Doing Tourism”, although many of those involved in the activity do not have the necessary training to understand this basic logic and, therefore, be able to perform their role appropriately. However, what is really important is to act on the larger issues that involve the strategic part and tactical action, which allow tourism to reach high levels of competitiveness, attracting the desired volume of tourists. This is what can be called the “trick”.

In the Brazilian case, the poor performance of government entities at various levels in fulfilling their role is noticeable. This situation is largely related to the lack of understanding by those responsible for the country's destinations of the meaning of the so-called "tourism multiplier effect" which, by impacting 57 segments of economic activity, involving businesses in agriculture, industry and services, promotes a strong synergy in the economy, generating the already known direct, indirect and induced impacts. In the case of the private sector, which suffers from the lack of credit, both for investments and working capital, there is a huge imbalance in the tourism supply. We can find, throughout Brazil, islands of competitiveness where quality tourism with a good level of diversity is offered to tourists, in contrast to poorly prepared and deficient destinations.

We are fully convinced that this state of affairs can be changed for the better, objectively, quickly and effectively. After all, it is unreasonable that Brazil, with its tourism potential, based on its natural resources and cultural heritage, should continue to grow mediocrely, year after year, in a merely vegetative manner, without the possibility of realizing its enormous potential. We need not only to evolve. We need to change the level of Brazilian tourism. How to do this, however, will be a topic for another time.