2.1. Country review
Portugal is southwestern Europe country is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in west and south, and just by one neighbor country, Spain, in north and east. An official language is Portuguese, and more young population speak English. The climate is mostly Mediterranean and Ocean. The most famous tourist destinations are Lisbon, which is the capital and largest city of Portugal; Algarve region, the south of Portugal; Porto, the north of Portugal; Madeira and the Azores islands in the Atlantic Ocean. The attractiveness factors of each region are: o Lisbon: river coast and boat cruise, nightlife, city’s attractions, historic neighborhood such as Belem and Sintra, beaches neighborhood such as Cascais. o Porto: cultural …show more content…
Tourism sector
Portugal tourism was ranked 15th with value 4.64 in Travel & Tourism (T&T) competitiveness index ranking in 2015, where 141 worldwide countries were measured and the leader was Spain with 5,31 (World Economic Forum report, 2015). To find pros and cons in Portugal tourism, I have created the bar graph between Spain and Portugal T&T factors’ scores. As we can see, the peak differences of factors in 2015 were Air transport and Ground & port infrastructures, Natural resources and Cultural & business travel, where Portugal had the fewer scores in 0,9 or more than Spain. Not just these factors should be improved in Portugal tourism sectors, but also the factors, which had the scores less than 5,0, such as Business environment, International openness, Price competitiveness and Environmental sustainability.
Other factors with scores more than or equal 5,0, can be called as the advantages of Portugal tourism. It is Safety and security, Health and hygiene, Human resources & labor market, ICT readiness (Information and communications technologies), Prioritization of T&T and Tourist service infrastructure.
2.3. Health …show more content…
In 2014, the Report of the Intermenstrual Working Group on Health tourism was presented, which was prepared by a team representing the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Economy, the Directorate-General for Health, the Central Administration of the Health System, the Tourism Institute of Portugal, the Portuguese Tourism Confederation, the Health Cluster Portugal (HCP) and the Medical Tourism Association Portugal (MTAP) (COMPETE 2020 website).
The final decision of the team was to focus on medical tourism, because it has the potential market with using the quality NHS and touristic services, but which is not yet structured as a product and enshrined in an international reputation. To solve the team's task to create a plan of action in developing the structuring of the product, the project MT Portugal (Medical tourism in Portugal) started to be therefore the way of embodying the plan. MT Portugal is promoted by a private non-profit association HCP and supported by COMPETE 2020 with approximately 1-1,2 million € investment. Its achieve 2 goals: o promote Portugal's offers in medical tourism, contributing to consolidate the international reputation of the country as medical tourism destination; o to contribute the structuring of partnerships between health cluster participates, such as the most reputed care providers, the main hotels and the other