Fonte: Journal of Tourism & Development; n. 5 (2006); 21-40
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Resumo: Tourism is a business sector known for its capability to lever economic growth, social prosperity and environmental sustainability. Quality must stand out from behind the scene, especially at destination level. The reason why this must be so lays on the fact that travel purchases by tourists depend primarily on their choice of a destination.On the other hand, it is acknowledged that tourists’ perceptions of tourism organisations, products and services will impact on the overall image of the destination. The tourist experience relates to the whole of the destination value chain and thus quality focus and goals must drive all stakeholders in addition to tourism industry.Conceptual trends in academic theorizing are finding empirical support for claiming that quality management emanates from values, principles and rules prevailing in organisations and consequently that quality is a matter of culture. It is to infer that emerging approaches are redefining quality in a much different and broader sense, and thus departing from an instrumental perspective.Just as any organisation, destinations must proactively decide what action towards quality they need to take in order to make it tangible. The “quality culture” construct, the hinge on which turns the new conceptualization of quality, is a way to achieve that goal. Assessment of “where you are” and discussion of “where you want to be” and “how to get there” in quality issues deemed crucial to destinations’ competitiveness and sustainability must run parallel with stern efforts towards the development of an all embracing culture able to integrate in a participatory framework the destinations’ stakeholders.The paper postulates the existence of an integrated and continuous quality culture as a condition of tourism sustainability and competitiveness, therefore suggesting methodological approaches useful to the construction of a destinations’ knowledge concerning its quality culture, as well as strategic tools that properly implemented and managed can bring it about.
