Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: RALYSON ADYSON MARQUES DA COSTA SOARES

Analysis of the Natal/RN destination in the systemic perspective of Smart Tourist Destinations

Smart Tourist Destination; Smart Tourism; Smart City; ICTs; Destination Management.

A Smart Tourism Destination (STD) can be understood as an innovative and accessible tourist space, which integrates technological infrastructure to ensure the sustainable development of the destination, and promote the interaction and integration of tourists to improve the tourist experience lived in the destination, as well as provide management tools for the stakeholders involved in the activity. The present study aims to understand the perception that public and private managers have of the tourist destination Natal-RN from the systemic model for the development and evaluation of STD proposed by Ivars-Baidal, Solsona Monzonís, and Giner Sánchez (2016). The systemic model is composed of three levels (Strategic-Relational, Instrumental, and Applied), which are interrelated and present indicators such as Governance, Sustainability, Innovation, Connectivity and Sensing, Information System and Tourism Applications and Solutions, which, through to adaptation to the reality of the destination, will guide the research. Therefore, it is descriptive-exploratory research with a qualitative approach and an inductive method. To capture the perception of managers' perception of the Natal-RN destination in the light of smart destinations, data collection will be carried out through an interview with a semi-structured questionnaire prepared from the adaptation of the dimensions and axes of the systemic model of STD. Data analysis will be done through content analysis supported by Iramuteq software (version 0.7 alpha 2). It is hoped that this research will contribute to the academic construction relevant to the theme of smart tourist destinations, as well as to the literature on tourism, management, planning, innovation, and information and communication technology. The results obtained will be able to help in the creation of strategies for the progression of the destinations to the level of intelligence, as well as its application in the development of management tools that maximize the tourist experiences, mainly in the Brazilian reality.