Entrepreneurship education in Portuguese tourism: fostering ideation, innovation and initiative

At a time when it is important to start preparing the future and devise new ways for economic and financial recovery, we look back to the some of the factors that helped Portugal take a significant leap in the quantity and quality of services related to tourism in the last decade. This chapter will address how state intervention, through an approach based on the triple-helix model, has helped new projects emerge. We analyse Turismo de Portugal’s strategy and the Fostering Innovation in Tourism (FIT) programme and how it has been stimulating the economy around tourism through development of entrepreneurial and business skills. In order to do so, we will resort the Tourism Creative Factory programme case study to see not only the methodologies used to foster and promote an entrepreneurial culture throughout the different regions of the country, but also to assess the role that this programme had in attaining the strategic goals set by Turismo de Portugal. The analysis of this case study will add to the literature on entrepreneurship education, as well as to research related to the history and evolution of tourism in Portugal.