Experience Tourism: relations between territoriality and local development in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil

Abstract

Experience Tourism has been provoking new ways of thinking from the perspective of intercultural and multidimensional development processes, especially from the actions of conservation and valorization of local cultures. In this sense, the study aimed to investigate aspects or elements of territoriality and local development in Campo Grande, MS, in search of viable relationships and possibilities for the implementation of this type of tourism. The methodology was based on qualitative research of bibliographic and documentary character. The results demonstrated the local potential beyond traditional tourism, as they also pointed out possibilities to become an experience destination, motivated mainly by the multiculturality of its people, the existing material and intangible heritage, in addition to the tourist attractions identified with the characteristics that advocate this type of interaction, which imprint their territorial dynamics on the local tourist map as an inducing city. Among the activities identified with the research in the Capital, which highlight the elements of the practice of Experience Tourism, the following stand out: Urban Birds Project; craft beer circuit; bird watching; visit to the Central Fair; visits to museums; walk to the historic center; ecological trails; walks in urban parks; the consumption of tereré drink; visiting the springs of the rivers that cut the city; in addition to listening to the stories told by the residents of Campo Grande, thus contributing to increasing their visibility in the national context, supported even by public tourism policies in all spheres.