Tourism Planning and Development in Maricá (RJ): Public Power Actions, Private Initiative, and Local Population Perspectives

Abstract:

The city of Maricá (RJ) has been going through a process of socioeconomic growth and tourism development has also been worked on. This research, which is part of a master's thesis, aims to understand which actions and projects have promoted tourism in Maricá and what the local population's assessment is of the actions implemented by the government and private initiative for tourism in the municipality. This is a study with a mixed methodology, combining documentary research, interviews, and exploratory survey research for data collection, and content analysis and simple descriptive statistics for data analysis. Several actions and projects aimed at structuring and strengthening the tourism sector in the municipality were found. Such actions were positively evaluated by the surveyed population, who also indicated that they have good perspectives about the development of tourism in Maricá, despite having little participation and knowledge of the projects, showing the need for local public administrators' strategies to attract it. Finally, the limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are listed.

Keywords:
Tourism policy; Tourism planning; Territorial development; Maricá (RJ)