THE FINANCIALIZATION OF THE (RE)PRODUCTION OF TOURISM ENTERPRISES AND REAL ESTATE

• Grant number: 25/24856-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2026
• End date: March 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Rita de Cássia Ariza da Cruz
• Grantee: Larissa Prado Rodrigues
• Supervisor: Asuncion Blanco Romero
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain
• Associated to the scholarship: 24/14476-1 - FINANCIALIZATION AND TOURISM: REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT FUNDS (FII) IN THE PRODUCTION OF TOURIST ENTERPRISES IN BRAZIL, BP.DR

Abstract

This Research Project presents the activities to be developed during the Research Internship Abroad (BEPE) scheduled to take place in Spain. Its guiding objective is to deepen the analysis of Real Estate Investment Funds (REIT) linked to tourism. To this end, we will seek to understand the links between financialization and tourism, especially the ways in which real estate funds operate, highlighting some of the similarities and differences between the Spanish and Brazilian cases. We start from the thesis that global financialization processes have expanded the logic of interest-bearing capital through new financial instruments, such as REIT, realizing financial capital through the production of space. At the same time, tourism, an activity that depends on space for its reproduction, has driven the construction of developments by becoming an important business in neoliberal capitalism, where the production and management of some tourist real estate has been closely linked to financial capital. In this context, the doctoral research that gave rise to this project investigates how the articulation between tourism, financialization, and the production of space is consolidated, contributing to the (re)production of real estate for tourist use through investment funds. The central hypothesis is that this movement introduces new dynamics to the tourism and financial sectors given that, in addition to REIT operating in hotel developments, more recently these instruments have been investing in real estate geared towards short-term rentals. Ultimately, with this proposal, we seek to shed light on the tourism-finance nexus, highlighting its ramifications and the trends in the expansion of tourism activity with REIT, in addition to the socio-spatial implications that arise from this process.