The Sociology of Tourism in College Education in Portugal

Abstract

The tourism has a socializing role in the society. Tourism allows the meeting of people from different cultures and contributes, in many cases, for the social and cultural changes in a region or country. If sociology is the science that studies the social facts or social action, then, tourism can be understood as a social phenomenon, so the sociology of tourism has as object of study the nature of the interaction between tourists and residents, and it also analyzes the social and cultural impacts where tourism develops. This paper aims to analyze the importance of the Sociology of Tourism in the structure of the college courses of tourism or its related areas (hotels, ecotourism, animation,) in the institutions of higher education in Portugal. The study had as main focus the tourism courses that offer the Sociology of Tourism as an obligatory subject in the curriculum.