Class Community Development and Entrepreneurship

  The curricular unit of Community Development and Entrepreneurship aims to foster an understanding of tourism as an economic, social, and territorial activity with direct impacts on local communities. Its field of action focuses on intervention in tourism territories, emphasizing community participation, the valorisation of endogenous resources, and social sustainability. The unit articulates with domains such as local development, spatial planning, and social entrepreneurship. Its relevance lies in the training of professionals capable of designing, implementing, and evaluating community-based tourism projects, responding to contemporary challenges in the sector and strengthening professional intervention capacity in diverse territorial contexts.

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Fundamentals of community development, territory, and social capital. Development models: local, community, and hybrid. Collaborative networks and governance in tourism. Tourism and social justice in local communities.   Community participation and stakeholder mapping.   Territorial diagnosis and analysis of local networks. Entrepreneurship in tourism and lifestyle entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship and community business models.   Social innovation and territorial ecosystems. Design, financing, and evaluation of community projects. Presentation and critical reflection on applied projects.

The curricular unit adopts innovative student-centred teaching and learning methodologies. These include problem-based learning, the development of projects applied to real or simulated territorial contexts, collaborative work, and participatory classroom dynamics. Case studies, guided debates, and simulations of participatory processes are also used, fostering critical thinking, autonomy, and student responsibility. Tutorial supervision of group projects further reinforces continuous reflection and the application of acquired knowledge to concrete situations within the tourism sector.

Aquino, R. S. (2022). Community change through tourism social entrepreneurship. Annals of Tourism Research, 95, 103442. Dias, Á., Silva, G. M., Patuleia, M., & González-Rodríguez, M. R. (2023). Developing sustainable business models: Local knowledge acquisition and tourism lifestyle entrepreneurship. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 31(4), 931-950. Dias, A., Simonetti, B., & Bakas, F. E. (2022). Developing Lifestyle Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Destinations. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 970005. Kastenholz, E., Brites Salgado, M. A., & Silva, R. (2023). Resilient and regenerative rural tourism: The case of Travancinha village, Portugal. Cadernos de Geografia, 48, 81–97. https://doi.org/10.14195/0871-1623_48_6 Martins, A., Patuleia, M., & Dias, Á. (2025). Rooted in Purpose: Community Attachment and Lifestyle Entrepreneurship in Low-Density Territories. Tourism and Hospitality, 6(5), 256. https://doi.org/10.3390/tourhosp6050256