Banca de DEFESA: RAFAELLA SOARES ESPÍNOLA

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : RAFAELLA SOARES ESPÍNOLA
DATE: 30/12/2022
TIME: 14:00
LOCAL: Nepsa II
TITLE:

Construction and Empirical Validation of a Tourism Quality Certification Protocol for Urban Beaches (PCTP)

KEY WORDS:

Beaches. Certifications. Quality index. Tourism.

PAGES: 266
BIG AREA: Ciências Sociais Aplicadas
AREA: Turismo
SUMMARY:

Considering the beach as one of the main attractive factors of coastal tourist destinations and its environmental, economic and recreational relevance, maintaining its quality is considered an investment in the tourism economy, since sun and sea tourism is responsible for the greatest tourist * flow *in Brazil. Most certification protocols primarily aproach the environmental and management aspects of the beach (infrastructure, maintenance of services, etc.), but the relevant criteria for tourism quality are rarely discussed. In Brazil, the only existing beach certification (Blue Flag) is applied to a few beaches and consists of an ecological seal that does not allow the evaluation of other necessary dimensions to evaluate the tourist quality, since the only parameter available is the bathing conditions of that beaches. As exposed, the following questions arise: What dimensions should be considered in beach quality certification protocols for tourist purposes? And what indicators are considered important for the certification of the tourist quality of beaches? Thus, this thesis has as its main objective the construction and empirical validation of a Tourism Quality Certification Protocol for Urban Beaches (PCTP), considering the creation of specific indicators for tourism, in order to contribute to a methodology for monitoring the quality of beaches. Therefore, the research, with a qualitative and multi-methodological approach, had four stages: 1) Identification of Protocol variables through systematic literature review with the aid of the Proknow-C method (Ensslin; Ensslin; Lacerda & Tasca, 2010) which allowed the development of the conceptual structure of the Protocol; 2) Implementation of the Delphi and Panel technique with specialists to refine the dimensions and indicators of the Protocol; 3) Application of questionnaires with visitors (tourists and residents) of the studied beaches to validate the instrument and obtain the necessary data to create the Tourist Quality Index (TQI) of each beach; 4) Validation of the evaluation protocol by calculating the IQT of the beaches and interpreting the results based on 5 levels of tourist quality: Terrible Tourist Quality; Bad Tourist Quality; Regular Tourist Quality; Good Tourism Quality (Expected) and Excellent Tourist Quality. The final version of the PCTP was composed of 4 dimensions: Environmental Quality (QA), Quality of Tourism Infrastructure (QIT), Quality of Basic Infrastructure (QIB) and Quality of Experience (QE), which were evaluated from 17 sub-dimensions and 75 indicators. The protocol was tested on two consolidated sun and sea tourism beaches in João Pessoa, Paraíba: Cabo Branco and Tambaú. The results indicated that the tourist quality of these two beaches was considered good (level 4), with indexes greater than 0.61. In this way, the two beaches could be certified as 4 stars on a 5-level scale. It was concluded that the most important factors of quality perceived by the visitor were cleanliness and security, followed by infrastructure (basic and tourist). In addition, the survey confirmed the relationship between perceived quality, satisfaction and beach loyalty. Finally, this research brought relevant theoretical and managerial contributions, such as the concept of "tourist quality" and advanced discussions on evaluation indexes and certifications for urban beaches, proposing an unprecedented tool (PCTP) to evaluate Brazilian urban beaches from the perception of the beach user (visitors).

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Interna - 2568265 - LEILIANNE MICHELLE TRINDADE DA SILVA BARRETO
Interno - 2001718 - LUIZ AUGUSTO MACHADO MENDES FILHO
Externo à Instituição - MARCELO CHIARELLI MILITO - SENAC
Externo à Instituição - MARCIO MARREIRO DAS CHAGAS - IFRN
Externa à Instituição - MARLI DE FATIMA FERRAZ DA SILVA TACCONI - IFRN
Presidente - 1160199 - SERGIO MARQUES JUNIOR