A importância da inteligência competitiva na direcção de empresas turísticas a partir de dois casos concretos: região das Missões (Brasil) e Costa del Sol (Espanha)

Abstract

With this work the authors try to demonstrate the growing use that Competitive Intelligence is experiencing, understood as a necessary tool to formulate and carry out the enterprise strategy. Competitive intelligence is multidisciplinary, which allows its use by a wide variety of disciplines and from different approaches. This research presents two alternative approaches to Competitive Intelligence, applied to the tourist industry in some regions of Brazil and Spain. As will be seen, although different methodologies have been used to analyze this industry in the above mentioned countries, the goal pursued through the use of Competitive Intelligence is common, i.e. to achieve a company’s business success. However, we would like to make clear that this work presupposes an approach of methods, focuses and uses of Competitive Intelligence from the Strategic Management point of view and that we are working on the development of a formal model of Competitive Intelligence, which can be applied to all countries and sectors of acti­vity. To speak of unity of criteria has been always a utopian idea, as all the exploratory investigations have shown and we can only rely on the knowledge of the different forms of using Competitive Intelligence in different countries where its application is considered, whilst trying to find common approach possibilities that can be applied to all countries. Our task is therefore to build a sufficiently explicit model to be able to come to definite conclusions in the field of the Competitive Intelligence.