Turismo, território e políticas públicas: uma análise do destino João Pessoa/PB

This study presents an approach to tourism activity from the perspective of the territory, analyzing the importance of the roles of the State and public policies for tourism development. Tourism in the northeastern region of Brazil begins to take its rise from the late 1970 through public policies, whose goal was to provide the necessary conditions for tourism development. The tourism public policies were the key elements in the production process of tourist territories in the region. In the state of Paraíba, the public authorities elected the coastline as the main attraction and the state capital, João Pessoa, as the locus for the tourism development, with the city receiving a series of public policies. In this context, this research aims to analyze the development process of three specific public policies for tourism development in João Pessoa: The (mega)Projeto Costa do Sol (1988), the PRODETUR/PB I and II (1997 e 2005) and the Plano Estratégico de Desenvolvimento do Turismo na Paraíba, the Plano Amanhecer (2000). This study was guided by the question that even having been contemplated by the tourism public policies, João Pessoa still remains in a peripheral position in the regional tourism market. The methodological procedures for this study were literature and documents research and semi-structured interviews with tourism public officials and representatives from local tourism trade. The research came to prove that the discontinuity between governmental administrations hampered the implementation process of the tourism public policies studied. It was observed that the implementation of tourism public policies in the long term depends on the interaction between governments, as well as the collective political will to develop tourism in Joao Pessoa