Produtos Turísticos Inovadores como uma Resposta ao Surgimento de Novos Perfis e Motivações Turísticas
Luís Ferreira 
1, André Monteiro1 and Manuel Vasconcelos1
1 ISCET – High Institute of Business and Tourism Sciences, Porto, Portugal
To cite this text:
Ferreira, L., Monteiro, A. & Vasconcelos, M. (2012), Produtos Turísticos Inovadores como uma Resposta ao Surgimento de Novos Perfis e Motivações Turísticas, Percursos & Ideias, Vol. 3&4, pp. 68-81.
Abstract
Recent paradigms changes in supply and demand create huge challenges to tourism industry. The multidisciplinary and transversality of the various sectors of activity make tourism extensive, enabling the creation of multiple segments, which result from the need to direct offer to targets with different motivations. Supply and demand segmentation for new productions should be sustainable, by implementing marketing strategies that may create in the sociological plot, empathy, emotion and desire to experience them. These strategies emerge as true processes to leverage new trends, new markets and new destinations, assuming a key role of personalization, either on the part of the human resources that will have to be more and more specialized through a “face-to-face” of excellence service, or on offer side, through greater innovation and customization of products. Tourists nowadays look forward to customization and personalization of the product,increase the level of requirements for the supply, become necessarily an expert, well – informed and connoisseur, who searches more and more for leisure travel as an attempt to escape the demands and day-to-day stress and have a moment where they can rebalance the energies. It is necessary that the offer may respond to these changes in demand. It is in this context that trends connected with Health and Welfare, Hydrotherapy, Thalassotherapy and Spas are reinforced as examples of an increasingly segmented and targeted offer for specific niche markets with different needs, adding benefits to destinations. Our investigation is based on the creation of innovative tourism products as an offer able to respond to emerging new profiles and tourist motivations. The core of this investigation is to understand how we can enhance thermal offer based on itineraries. The central goal is divided in three specific objectives: (1) to identify signals that emphasise this new offer follow the growing tendency in creating themed itineraries and (2) to evaluate if this proposal of itinerary will allow structuring the tourist destinations offer. Finally, (3) we aim to understand how we can link this thermal offer, directed to a specific segment and integrate it in the global tourist offer, turning it into a leisure itinerary. From the methodological point of view, the present investigation is based on a qualitative approach and at a first stage, in order to accomplish the first two specific objectives we intend to apply the Delphi methodology, inviting for the effect, a certain number of investigators and specialists to integrate the group. By using the focus groups methodology we intend to validate the proposals obtained in Delphi methodology, and with the participation of Health and Wellness promoters, tour operators, and travel agents, justify the third specific objective. This investigation aims to have contributed to a better knowledge on the theme and settled the structuring and potential development bases of an innovative product, based on thermal resources. A product that, based on an itinerary, may be able to respond, in a structured way, to different profiles and tourist motivations and add value to the destination offer.
Keywords
Tourism, New products, Itineraries, Trends, Visitor profiles, Visitor motivations.