Third International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies

Abstract

Long admired for their inherent beauty and tranquility, gardens have emerged as a strategic resources of the territories and have become an increasingly popular and widely visited tourist attractions making it one of the protagonists of contemporary tourism. According to Benfield (2013) there are more than 300 million garden visitors in the world. Throughout the world there are gardens that have been reaching records of visitation. Portugal is also part of this phenomenon. Visitors to the botanical gardens have already exceed one million and it is believed that visitors to the gardens will be around four million. Visiting gardens is thus a tourism segment with significant expression but also with a wide margin of progression. In this context, this paper explores the results of a study centered on the discussion of the Portuguese historical gardens as cultural and landscape heritage and as touristic attractions. It also assesses the characteristics and dynamics of the gardens through the supply and the demand achieved by the application of questionnaires to about 100 gardens managers and to more than 600 visitors from three renowned gardens. The main results of this investigation point to the effective recognition of the intrinsic value of Portuguese historic gardens and their potential to become a quality tourist product.