Fatores de Competitividade Turística: A Área Regional de Turismo do Algarve

Tourism has emerged as an industry with enormous potential for national and global scale, taking a prominent role as an instrument of competitiveness and regional development booster. There are many studies on this subject, however are still deficient those who are focused on empirical validation of a tourist destination competitiveness models. This research intends to contribute to filling this gap, the purpose of which is based on the evaluation of the competitiveness of the regional area of the Algarve tourism, by identifying the tourism competitiveness factors in this region. The methodology used in the research required the application of primary data, where it was used a questionnaire to the companies with the satellite account of characteristics activities of the World Tourism Organization. Using structural equation models, the results show that there are several significant relationships between resources, supply and destination management as key factors for the competitiveness of the regional study area.