The management of information as a generator of competitiveness in Colombian ecotourism companies

Abstract

The paper on ecotourism consists of an analysis of the information management of the business units or ecotourism companies that are being developed in Colombia, especially in remote areas of the capital (Bogotá), such as San Andrés, Guaina, Amazonas. Bahía de Málaga (control region), which includes areas with a continuous influx of tourists such as San Gil, Eje Cafetero and the Farallones de Cali natural park and places in the eastern central region of the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia (UCC) such as: Ubaque, Cáqueza, Choachí, Guatapé, Girardot, Nimaima, Tibirita and El Castillo, achieving a total of 15 areas under study. The above, in accordance with the Colombian ecotourism policy whose objective is to develop a sustainable tourism that contributes both to the protection of the environment and to the development of the communities of the tourist areas, especially the protected areas that can provide economic resources through ecotourism. However, although there are ecotourism organizations, at this moment there is no real application of the Policy and the provisions in this regard, which contributes to the environmental deterioration and the low development of ecological tourism in the country. This added to the administrative problems generates a low development of the organizations that, therefore, limits the social and economic possibilities of these regions. Therefore, the question that was tried to answer is: what are the factors related to the management of information that can be improved or implemented so that ecotourism in remote regions of Colombia becomes a pillar of economic development? To answer the question, between two to three organizations in each of the 7 protected areas and 8 in the vicinity of the Bogotá headquarters of the UCC, were analyzed, seeking to determine the information management problems. For this, the Bahía de Málaga natural reserve was taken as a reference, where ecotourism is developed in the natural park through a cooperative created with the support of researchers from the Universidad de los Andes, which was compared with the organizations of the other 14 tourist sites; To determine how managers use information management for decision-making, two instruments were applied, such as a semi-structured interview where it was found that decision-makers do not have much in mind how to use information correctly, for social applications and organizational management, and a direct non-participatory observation was developed where it was found through a Likert-type analysis that tourism managers should be trained in communication management and improve social integration, finally, with a DOFA diagnosis for each of the tourism companies were given improvement plans through some booklets built for the managers who participated in the study.