Tourism businesses, local state and habits of interaction: an institutional approach

Abstract

Tourism studies can benefit from inquiring into how interactions between businesspeople and governments work. The interdisciplinary approach of institutional economics provides a basis for investigating shared patterns of thought and action instituted in each class of agents and between them. This approach is here applied to Curitiba, a southern Brazilian state capital city that has become successful in attracting tourists since the late 1970s. Using semi-structured questionnaires, we interviewed 26 representatives from both the private and public sectors in Curitiba along 2013 and 2014. Partisanship, poor communication, and differing priorities were found to account for relevant coordination and planning problems, in a background of severe government budgetary constraints.