UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHS) act as icons to attract visitors seeking to experience cultural (ancient) heritage. Gastronomy, as cultural heritage, reinforces the identity of a destination. Presenting a case study from a Portuguese UNESCO WHS, this study brings insights into how these destinations may deepen the knowledge on gastronomic visitors, contributing to their sustainable development. Specifically, this study aims to identify the importance that visitors give to gastronomy and to identify their differences in terms of profile and travel behaviour, through data collected using a visitors’ survey. Results show that gastronomy can be a major motivator for visiting a WHS and indicate that visitors strongly motivated by gastronomy have differences in terms of demographic profile, motivations and expenditures.

The development of creative tourism in small towns in rural areas has been the subject of growing interest and research from different perspectives. As part of the national CREATOUR project, which took place in Portugal over about four years, various organisations with relevant activity in the cultural aspect of creative tourism were analysed, constituting a successful reference at a national and international level. However, since mid-2020, the health crisis owing to the pandemic made it necessary to reflect and work under new circumstances for tourism, in contexts not previously planned for, and at the same time as continuing to champion sustainable development. It is in this context that the present study emerges, the aim of which is to identify organizations’ strategies for adaptation within the scope of creative tourism activities in a pandemic situation. This empirical approach is anchored in the case study of the activities of the ‘Saídas de Mestre’ project based on intangible cultural heritage, using in-depth analysis of strategies developed to mitigate the effects of supply and demand constraints. The results show that there was no disintegration of the supply structure, as planned, due to the fact that creative activities are based on the valorisation of the principles of sustainable development and, therefore, depend on endogenous resources and local agents, who remained accessible.

A articulação entre o planeamento e o desenvolvimento turístico (ou do turismo) sustentável, tendo em vista satisfazer as necessidades económicas, sociais e estéticas sem colocar em causa a continuidade dos recursos turísticos (designadamente culturais e ecológicos), remete para a relevância do processo de planeamento. O planeamento do turismo configura uma ferramenta estruturante da política de desenvolvimento sustentável e, por isso, ocupa um lugar decisivo no processo de concepção e implementação de estratégias de desenvolvimento. O presente artigo pretende contribuir para aprofundar a análise teórica e conceptual em torno da trilogia “turismo/planeamento/desenvolvimento sustentável”, utilizando como suporte metodológico uma revisão da bibliografia mais relevante neste domínio.

A Internet como novo meio de comunicação para os destinos turísticos: o caso da Ilha da Madeira