COMMERCIAL STRATEGIES AND MANAGEMENT OF THE PARANÁ COAST IN THE LOW SUMMER SEASON

Resumo

Tourism on the coast of Parana has a strong influence of seasonality and the summer season, and tourist accommodation in the region has a significant contribution from inns. However, up to date, no studies have been found that reveal the forms of management of these types of enterprises. Thus, the objective of this study was to promote an assessment of which commercial strategies were adopted by the management of tourist inns on the coast of Parana, subsequently identifying which resulted in a competitive advantage in occupancy rates in the low summer season in the perception of the interviewees. An exploratory descriptive and quantitative research was carried out, with a transversal temporal cut, whose data were collected through a semi-structured questionnaire in a sample for accessibility with 60 managers of inns. The study revealed that the managers of inns on the coast of Parana mostly lacked formal education in management, they manage their enterprises in an empirical way, without long-term ´planning and with limited use of management tools. The lack of professional qualification may be interfering in the quality of the competitive strategies used by the inn managers in the low season on the coast of Parana, due to the fact that most of them are simple strategies, and adopted in an identical way in practically all inns visited.