This paper describes the main public policies for tourism in Brazil, highlighting them as instruments for tourism development in the Amazon frontier region. Public policies for the development of tourist activity, the goals and guidelines that guide the socio-spatial development of the activity, depend on the actions of government officials. In this sense, the development plan is fundamental in determining the priorities that will stimulate the growth of tourism in each region, that is, the tourism policy must work both in stimulating and directly controlling the development of tourism, as well as being concerned with the protection of the interests of society. This is a contextualization study based on a literature review. It was evident that public tourism policies can be elaborated, implemented and supervised at the municipal, state and federal levels, however, it is at this last level that the guidelines of public tourism policies in Brazil are concentrated, however, conditioning the creativity of companies to the background, strategies for the sector at the state and municipal levels, thus demonstrating the strong dependence of the sector on the action of the federal public power and, consequently, an obstacle to entrepreneurship and the very development of tourism at the local level. It can be inferred that despite the great potential that the Amazon region has, the tourism sector still faces numerous obstacles to its development in its entirety, among them we can highlight: low interest in the topic due to municipal economic fragility; by social disorganization; the lack of adequate infrastructure for leisure practices; by the lack of public investments that encourage the development of the tourism market; by the lack of information from society's actors regarding public policies; by the lack of strategic vision of the public power; due to the lack of a master plan in the municipality that establishes rules and that these are clear with regard to the development of tourist activity in the Amazon region.

Objective: to build a sustainable development index for the river basins of Rondônia, using factor analysis as an analytical model. Method: factor analysis was used as a tool for building environmental, economic, social and institutional performance indices. The adapted FECAM classification scale was adopted to express the results achieved by each river basin. Results: The set of current sustainable performance indices for the Mamoré River watersheds (0.444) was considered a low index, although the best compared to other basins; the Madeira River (0.419, low index); the Guaporé River (0.378, low index); the Machado River (0.289, low index); the Jamari River (0.307, low index) and the Roosevelt River (0.227, low index). There has been a really insignificant improvement in the rates from 10 years ago. Conclusions: the factor analysis showed efficiency as a multivariate statistical method in the construction of sustainable development indices for the river basins of Rondônia. The management of watersheds is still very ineffective, despite being regulated by state law. It is highly recommended to institutionalize regional public policies in the form of a Master Plan for the Rondônia Watershed.