Qualitative Research in Tourism - Use of WebQDA in the C’s Tourist Destination Competitiveness Matrix

Abstract

Up until the beginning of 2020, the world panorama of tourism had enormous growth potential. There was increasing pressure on the tourist infrastructure and related services, so competitiveness in the travel and tourism sector was seen both as a powerful economic tool and a driver of growth, and also a risk to the continued development of the industry if it were not managed in a sustainable manner. In this context, it was (and will be) important to understand and analyse the differentiating and enhancing factors of the competitiveness of a tourist destination – in this case, the city of Oporto and the North of Portugal. Faced with the difficulty of applying theoretical models to analyse the competitiveness of tourist destinations, it was decided to deepen the study of the most recognised models and, with the support of a panel of experts, the “4 C’s Tourism Destination Competitiveness Matrix” was created. This paper aims to demonstrate the importance of qualitative analysis in the study of tourist destination competitiveness through the results obtained from the base survey of the said Matrix. The use of the qualitative analysis software webQDA allowed for us to obtain clues, or to observe trends in opinions, about the competitiveness of the destination Oporto, and it demonstrated the potential of the tool, allowing us to infer that it will be possible to obtain more significant conclusions with a larger sample. Keywords: