Abstract:

This article is dedicated to understanding the intertwining of two materializations of public Tourism actions, namely: the Tourism Regionalization Program (PRT) and the investments made by the Ministry of Tourism (MTur). This is a gap in the studies of public tourism policies, when trying to understand the effectiveness of public actions by the applied financial instruments (González, 2014). Thus, it is intended to align the resources allocated to the municipalities with the Tourism Regionalization Map, in order to spatialize these actions, discover possible concentrations and deepen the debate about ministerial action. Then, it is also intended to classify the use of public resources into categories of use (1 – Public Square; 2 – Event Support; 3 – Infrastructure; 4 – Urbanization; 5 – Management Actions; 6 – Attractions; 7 – Gantries; 8 – Tourist Sign). The spatial focus of the research will be the state of Rio de Janeiro, the choice of this federative unit was due to its significant power of attracting international tourists, as well as being a consolidated destination in the Brazilian domestic market. The time frame starts in 2004, as it is the first year of implementation of the Tourism Regionalization Program (PRT), and ends in 2016, due to the data from the Transfer Contracts System of the Ministry of Tourism (SIACOR) having this limitation. About 478 agreements established between MTur and the municipalities of RJ were analyzed. The main results point to a distribution of resources without technical criteria. Among the 10 municipalities that received the most resources from MTur, at least 4 (São João do Meriti, Itaborai, Maricá and Nova Iguaçu) have no tourist representation and no relevant tourist attractions, or even belong to Tourism production chains. The main category of use of MTur resources in RJ are: Infrastructure (30.3%), Urbanization (21%) and Public Squares (19.5%). The development of tourist attractions accounted for only 9.1% of all investment. In addition, the research points to important tourist municipalities in the state of RJ (Itatiaia and Cabo frio) that did not receive any agreement or funding from MTur. This paper contributes to elucidating the way MTur operates through the distribution of resources and their uses for the development of Tourism policies in the last decade.

Keywords: