Online travel agencies and the creation of new tourist destinations : a study about Hurb and Olímpia

• Autor(a) principal: Feliciano, Ana Carolina Vaz
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/40732
• topic: Tourism; Tourism destinations; Distribution channels; Destination structuring; Online travel agencies; Olímpia (SP); Hurb; Turismo; Destinos turísticos; Canais de distribuição; Estruturação de destinos; Agências de viagens online; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

The objective of this study is to understand the extent to which online tourism agencies can help in the creation of new destinations. The dissertation is based on the case study of Olímpia (SP) and focuses on Hurb's involvement in the destination development process. It follows a qualitative methodology - an exploratory research - about the influence of Hurb in the development of Olímpia. Six interviews were conducted with executives of Hurb and Olímpia, using a semi-structured script about the influence of Hurb in 5 tourism dimensions. In addition, the analysis of primary data from Hurb and Olímpia contributed to the illustration of the research hypotheses. The results show that Hurb played a fundamental role in the development of Olympia as a destination. The platform was the city's main marketing tool, and the demand created by the platform had a direct impact on the city's tourism services. The demand created by Hurb was the beginning of tourism development of the destination and had an impact on the economic and social development of the region. The main limitations of the research are the difficulty of transferring the results to larger populations, linguistic ambiguities and biases in data analysis. In addition, the process of creating a destination was a 10-year process, and details may have been forgotten or not mentioned in the interviews. The study provided important insights into the importance of distribution channels in new destination creation and confirmed the importance of entrepreneurs in this process.