Tourism and Regional Competitiveness: the Case of the Portuguese Douro Valley

Argentino Pessoa

FEP Working Papers from Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto

Abstract: Using a framework that articulates the most important factors of competitiveness to evaluate the regional economic strategies, and applying this framework to the Portuguese NUT III Douro, we show that this region is relatively weak in terms of internal linkages, subject to ageing and out-migration and lacking in innovation and entrepreneurship, apart from being isolated from mass markets. With these characteristics, to define only the priority to tourism is clearly insufficient for convergence. So, after assessing the results of such strategy, the paper ends with a conclusion that is extensive to other regions: the lagging regions, which are trying to converge with the more developed ones based on tourism, cannot only rely on a combination of environmental resources and marketing, but have to attend to other factors of competitiveness as well.

Keywords: Douro Valley; environmental resources; regional competitiveness; tourism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q25 Q28 R19 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2008-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-env, nep-geo, nep-mkt and nep-tur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:por:fepwps:299

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