Stakeholder Assessment and Collaborative Tourism Planning: The Case of Brazil's Costa Dourada Project

Abstract

The paper reviews approaches to identifying the stakeholders who are affected by a tourism project and who might participate in collaborative tourism planning. Two such approaches are discussed and analysed based on research carried out on stakeholders affected by the Costa Dourada project, a regional tourism planning initiative in north-east Brazil. The first approach involves assessing the stakeholders who had participated in the project planning by attending local workshops or project meetings intended to promote collaborative planning. The second involves interviewing a sample of stakeholders affected by the project and also stakeholders directly involved in the project planning, asking them for their views on stakeholders they consider relevant to the project but who were not participants in the planning process. These two approaches are used to examine whether the range of stakeholders participating in the planning process was representative of the stakeholders affected by the project and was also likely to encourage consideration of the diverse issues of sustainable development. It is found that varied stakeholders had participated in the planning process, but there was only limited participation by the private sector and environmental NGOs.