Business plan: Casal do Vale: rural tourism

Abstract

The main objective of this master work is to study the financial viability of the transformation of a small country estate into a rural tourism accommodation. Therefore, this master thesis is presented in a business plan format. Over the last years, the tourism sector has shown an increasing importance on the Portuguese economy, being verified a significant increasing of tourists’ entrances among the Portuguese borders in the last decade. Allied to this positive scenario are the Portuguese economy perspectives which, according to "Banco de Portugal", seem to be finally entering in a recuperation phase. Therefore, these forecasts are favourable to this business implementation. In order to better understand the surrounding business environment for this project, the external and internal business analysis was made, as well as the market analysis. The crossing of this data and the literature review, which defines several management, tourism, sustainability and traveller experience concepts, are essential to this study. Since this is a new business, it is never too much to emphasize the importance of the marketing components, logistics, human resources management and financial viability study, for the success of the project. Finally, based on this business plan and on the economic and financial viability study for the first five years of business operations, it is possible to conclude that there is no viability for the implementation of this project as it is presented.

The main objective of this master work is to study the financial viability of the transformation of a small country estate into a rural tourism accommodation. Therefore, this master thesis is presented in a business plan format. Over the last years, the tourism sector has shown an increasing importance on the Portuguese economy, being verified a significant increasing of tourists’ entrances among the Portuguese borders in the last decade. Allied to this positive scenario are the Portuguese economy perspectives which, according to Banco de Portugal, seem to be finally entering in a recuperation phase. Therefore, these forecasts are favourable to this business implementation. In order to better understand the surrounding business environment for this project, the external and internal business analysis was made, as well as the market analysis. The crossing of this data and the literature review, which defines several management, tourism, sustainability and traveller experience concepts, are essential to this study. Since this is a new business, it is never too much to emphasize the importance of the marketing components, logistics, human resources management and financial viability study, for the success of the project. Finally, based on this business plan and on the economic and financial viability study for the first five years of business operations, it is possible to conclude that there is no viability for the implementation of this project as it is presented.