Residents’ perspectives on tourism impacts of portuguese world heritage historic centers: Angra do Heroísmo and Évora

The aim of this study is twofold. First, the study analyzes local community perspectives of the importance of the World Heritage Site (WHS) classification of the historic centers of Angra do Heroísmo and Évora. Second, the study analyzes local residents’ perceived tourism impacts on the municipalities of Angra do Heroísmo and Évora. The methodology comprises quantitative research based on a self-administered survey applied to convenience samples of local residents of the two Portuguese municipalities in 2014. The main results reveal that local residents have a strongly positive perception of the WHS designation in both municipalities. With regard to the perceived tourism impacts, residents from Angra do Heroísmo have a stronger agreement about the impacts of tourism on their city than the residents of Évora, except for the negative social and cultural impacts. The comparison of the mean scores of these impacts across residents that live near and far from the historic centers reveals that the most valued and least valued impacts in the three categories of impacts (economic, social and cultural, and environmental) are common to all groups of residents. Nevertheless, residents living in or near the historic center of Angra do Heroísmo have higher means in the majority of tourism impacts (in all categories), with only one negative impact to concern the majority of respondents. Among the residents from Évora, residents living in or near the historic center have higher means in the majority of economic impacts but lower means in almost social and cultural impacts. With regard to the environmental impacts, residents living in or near the historic center have higher means scores in the positive impacts and lower means scores in the negative environmental impacts.

Certification and integration of management systems: the experience of Portuguese small and medium enterprises

The purpose of this study was to characterize the situation of Portuguese Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) concerning the certification of their Quality Management Systems (QMS), Environmental Management Systems (EMS) and Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OHSMS), in their individually form, to identify benefits, drawbacks and difficulties associated with the certification process and to characterize the level of integration that has been achieved. This research was based on a survey carried out by the research team; it was administered to 46 Portuguese SMEs. Our sample comprised 20 firms (43%) from the Trade/Services activity sector, 17 (37%) from the Industrial sector, 5 (11%) from the Electricity/Telecommunications sector and 4 (9%) from the Construction area. All SMEs surveyed were certified according to the ISO 9001 (100%), a quarter of firms were certified according to the ISO 14001 (26.1%) and a few certified by OHSAS 18001 (15.2%). We undertook a multivariate cluster analysis, which enabled grouping variables into homogeneous groups or one or more common characteristics of the SMEs participating in the study. Results show that the main benefits that Portuguese SMEs have gained from the referred certifications have been, among others, an improvement of both their internal organization and external image. We also present the main difficulties in achieving certification. Overall, 7 of the Portuguese SMEs examined indicated that the main benefits of the IMS implementation management included costs reduction, increased employee training and easier compliance of legislation. The respective drawbacks and difficulties are also presented. Finally, we presented the main integrated items in the certified Portuguese SMEs we examined.

Tourism impacts of a portuguese world heritage historic center: residents’ perspectives

The aim of this study is twofold. First, the study analyzes local community perspectives of the importance of the WHS classification of the historic center of Évora. Second, the study analyzes local residents’ perceived tourism impacts on the municipality of Évora. The methodology comprises quantitative research based on a self-administered survey applied to convenience samples of local residents of Évora in the beginning of 2014. The main results reveal that local residents have a strongly positive perception of the WHS designation. With regard to the perceived tourism impacts, a principal component factor analysis delineated three positive and three negative tourism impacts. The comparison of the mean scores of these factors across residents that live near and far from the historic center reveals that the most valued and least valued factors are common to all groups of residents. Nevertheless, in terms of positive impacts, the residents that live near the historic center revealed higher means than the residents that live far from it, whereas in terms of negative impacts, the latter group revealed higher means than former group.