TOURIST REGIONS OF SANTA CATARINA: ANALYSIS OF REGIONAL TOURISM DEVELOPMENT BASED ON THE CATEGORIZATION OF THE BRAZILIAN TOURISM MAP - 2019 (MTUR)

ABSTRACT:

Santa Catarina plays a key role in the Brazilian tourist scenario due to the strong demand for its main destinations, and also its process of tourist regionalization, which began in the 1970s and 1980s. The current national policy of categorizing tourist municipalities - known as the Tourism Map - began in 2013 and was last updated in 2019. This categorization is part of the Brazilian Tourism Regionalization program. The main objective of this article is to analyze the evolution of the regional tourism categorization in the State of Santa Catarina, based on the categorization and regionalization of the National Tourism Policy. The basic research for this article was exploratory and descriptive, through document research. The data on municipal categorization were organized by tourist region, in order to recognize regional tourism development indices. The regions of Santa Catarina were classified into those that had consolidated tourism and those that did not. The indices presented a panorama of tourism development in the regions of the state, with one consolidated touristic region, five regions in consolidation, and seven non-consolidated regions. Based on an analysis and evaluation of the data on tourism in the state, it can be seen that the regions are constantly evolving, especially due to the renewal of public policies, which signals the need for the municipal, state and national administrations to adopt strategic governance actions to address municipal categorization and regional division.

KEYWORDS:
Tourism Regionalization; Tourism Map; Governance; Categorization of Tourist Municipalities; Tourism in Brazil; Tourism in Santa Catarina