A Acessibilidade como um factor chave do desenvolvimento do turismo em regiões periféricas: O caso da Beira Interior[Accessibility as a key factor of the development of tourism in peripheral regions: the case of Beira Interior region]

Tourism and accessibilities are interlinked. On one hand tourism is a driving factor for and (often) a stimulator of change in accessibilities; on the other hand accessibilities themselves opened new touristic destination perspectives even helping to develop locally correlated new business models. Beira Interior is located close to the Spanish border and traditionally seen as a peripheral region. In the last years the weaknesses of the tourism industry have been justified on the basis of shortness and/or lack of quality in accessibilities, mainly those concerning transport infrastructures. In order to evaluate whether there is in fact a case in favour of accessibility shortage we developed a methodology that would allow us to identify the accessibility gains in the recent past, the ones foreseeable in the usually adopted planning periods and the ones possible in a asymptotic scenario of strong generalised accessibility, enabling this way to make explicit identification of the gains already achieved and the ones still possible. Finally, this methodology allows evidencing either geographic directions or partner regions for which Beira Interior could get significant contributions in the development of its tourist potential, also targeting the future installation under high competitiveness conditions of new business models associated with this economic activity