Abstract
Despite being one of the world's leading industries and one of the most important economic sectors in many countries, tourism has flourished more on the basis of spontaneity than as a product of planned actions. The objective of this thesis is to examine whether there is a case for tourism planning and the way it should be carried out in the future. As tourism planning is a specialisation of urban and regional planning, the first part of the thesis sets out to examine the links between the two disciplines, the way they evolved in the past, and how their efficacy can be improved in the future. However, one of the central arguments offered is that the improvement of tourism planning cannot be seen only in terms of the planning process, since, although consistently neglected, its success depends on the organisational framework in which it is carried out. Bearing that in mind, an insight is provided into the hierarchical and bureaucratic styles which dominate the operation of most organisations to show that they are no longer suited to today’s reality. The transition from the welfare state towards neo-liberalism is outlined with the objective of demonstrating that nowadays successful forms of organisation and effective styles of planning demand horizontality, flexibility, cooperation, empowerment and greater emphasis on regional level administrations. Within this context it is shown that 'networks' contain enormous potential to redesign, readjust and relaunch the Way in which organisations operate and the tourism planning activity is carried out. The methodology utilized includes a multiplicity of methods ranging from descriptive statistics to sociometric analysis. Although emphasizing the case of Portugal the examples, discussion and findings are based on worldwide trends and, therefore, the recommendations are applicable to other countries.