Turismo na Terceira Idade: um olhar geográfico sobre o projeto Trilhas da Longevidade

Abstract

The world and Brazilian population is aging due to better living conditions, medical achievements and advances in drug production. In Brazil, the demographic trend has been directed at the expressive number of elderly people with the increase in life expectancy of Brazilians, according to the IBGE (2016) in 2016 was 75.8 years and could reach 76.7 years in 2020. This demographic data should not be isolated because it has influenced different sectors of society as the public with public policies and tourism to mobilize and attend with attention, respect and dignity to the growing age group. In tourism, Trilhas da Longevidade was a municipal public tourism program, developed by the Municipality of Uberlândia, through the Municipal Department of Social Development and Work, which allocated the participation of the elderly in trips made between 2014 and 2016. Faced with this reality and the involvement with the Trails the research had as objective to analyze the Tourism for Third Age and the Trails of Longevity of Uberlândia (MG). Thus, the program allowed fundamental discoveries about the Third Age that seeks to live intensely this stage of life and has gained space in contemporary society, as well as being interested in tourism, as it favors social interaction, brings improvements to health and contributes to new experiences. Based on the analyzes carried out in this study, we sought to identify the population data, the segment of tourism for the Third Age, as well as the public policies for the elderly, and the places visited during the trips.