Tourism Clusters

Summary: In English, ‘cluster’ means connection, union, agglomeration, assembly, congregation or cooperation; in the context of management, the word means, in short, the organization of a local productive arrangement. This definition originates from the field of administration, which is known worldwide because of the writings of Michael Porter. The study of clusters became widespread in the 1990s because entrepreneurs and scholars were interested in understanding the relationships established among companies there are three basic characteristics for a local productive arrangement: Agglomeration, Affinity, and Articulation. Most cluster studies cover large areas, giving rise to this misperception about the theory. With cluster configuration, destinations become more competitive in the local, regional, national and international markets because, in this model, the production chains of several companies become closely linked.

One of the main objectives of Silva (2004) was to analyse the consistency and validity of the concepts of clustering and the productive chain of Porter when applied to tourism. For a better understanding of this topic, one might consider the example of the tourism cluster of Bonito, in the Mato Grosso do Sul state (MS) in Brazil, which is a nature-tourism destination. Barbosa and Zamboni (2000) provided the following description of the Bonito tourism cluster. The cluster, with the position occupied by each of the actors and the correlations established among them, is composed of a graphical representation comprising five rings.