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Searching for clusters in tourism. A quantitative methodological proposal

Author

Listed:
  • Cristina Santos

    (Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto)

  • Alexandre Almeida

    (Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto)

  • Aurora A.C. Teixeira

    (INESC Porto, CEMPRE, Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto)

Abstract

The tourism industry is one of Europe’s leading employers, and for many regions highly dependent on tourists’ spending, innovation is the difference between growth and stagnation. Thus, at a regional level, tourism may function as a driving force of socioeconomic development and thus contribute to the demise of regional disparities. Such lever effect is usually associated to a geographical concentration abusively denominated of clusters. Most of the studies within the tourism industry identify clusters resorting to simplistic analyses of geographic location measures or experts’ opinions. These latter tend to neglect the essence of the cluster concept, namely the inter-linkages among regional actors. In the present paper, we propose a methodology to rigorously identify tourism clusters, stressing the importance of networks and cooperation between agents.

Suggested Citation

  • Cristina Santos & Alexandre Almeida & Aurora A.C. Teixeira, 2008. "Searching for clusters in tourism. A quantitative methodological proposal," FEP Working Papers 293, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    • Handle: RePEc:por:fepwps:293
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Clusters; Tourism; Methodology;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • R15 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Econometric and Input-Output Models; Other Methods
    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
    • C67 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Input-Output Models

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