Tourism Development Potential in an Insular Territory: The Case of Ribeira Grande in the Azores The Autonomous Region of the Azores is one of the most sustainable destinations in the world. Being an archipelago comprised of nine small islands, quality and sustainability are critical features in the tourism sector, inducing the need for thorough and technical strategic development processes. Ribeira Grande is an important municipality in the Azores, which envisioned tourism as a strategic sector to develop when the partial liberalization of the air passenger transport sector occurred in 2015. However, this destination had little tourism maturity and competitiveness and required some structural planning work. The development of a strategic plan for tourism for the municipality of Ribeira Grande, including the selection of tourism products, is explained in detail in this article, which highlights the main challenges and results of the process.

The Azores is one of the most sustainable nature-based island destinations in the world. Local tourism activities companies are vital to tourists' adventure experiences. These businesses' portfolios were analysed using various editions of the official Tourism Activities Guide. The analysis focused on companies' products, types of activities, geographical coverage and brands. The generalised profile generated indicates that these firms each operate on only one island, have a small portfolio and are prone to specialise in sea or land activities. Snorkelling and motor boat rides are the most common sea activities, while nature hikes and walks, van tours and cultural tours are the most widely offered land activities. Explicit or indirect references to the Azores and adventure often appear in companies' brands, which is in line with international trends in adventure tourism. However, company profiles are changing due to the impacts of a new air transport model.

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Tourism planning is increasingly a fundamental process for qualifying and increasing the competitiveness of tourist destinations, especially when it is required to take into account the new needs of tourists and the global trend towards meeting the principles of sustainable tourism. This study aims to analyse the improvements that, in the opinion of visitors, should be implemented in Ponta Delgada, the largest hub of tourism activity in the Azores (Portugal), detecting differences between specific groups of visitors in order to contribute to the territorial organisation and the optimisation of tourism experiences. Four hundred answers to a survey distributed among tourists who visited this Azorean municipality were analysed, using several statistical methods, such as the chi-square test of independence and some Hierarchical Cluster Analysis algorithms. The main conclusions refer to the statistically significant associations between the mean of transport used to travel and views of some aspects to be improved, with signs of patterns in visits and critical attitude.

This paper discloses the strategic tourism planning process carried out in the Municipality of Ribeira Grande. This is an important municipality of the Azores, although with a poor tourism performance. Recognizing this gap, Ribeira Grande was the first municipality in the Region to develop a strategic tourism development plan. The process included statistical analysis, based on different statistical methods, on tourists' responses to a questionnaire. The strategic plan had to be focused on the most differentiating local resources and attractions and had to fit into the regional development strategy for the Azores. Local stakeholders and tourists were consulted and they selected naturebased tourism and local natural resources as the destination's most important features. However, tourists pointed out the need for more adventure tourism packages and more walking trails. All the inputs resulted in the definition of four strategic products: nautical tourism, cultural tourism, wellness tourism, and nature tourism.