Beach Certification Schemes in Latin America: Are They Applicable to the Brazilian Context?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1- Orla Project is sometimes abbreviated sometimes not.

2- At lines 59, 124 only the citation format is wrong (Only the number is given whereas it should be author names)

3- Line 204 should be "program covers five"

4 - Figure 1 does not show that Mexico and Colombia is covered by Blue Flag program.

5 - Figure 2 uses abbreviations, but there is no reference anywhere to indicate what some of the abbreviations are. It might be helpful to have the abbreviations indicated in Table 1.

6- In figure 2 the graph at the right is confusing. The graph reads as the management classification having the most amount of conformity factors whereas it is actually showing a cumulative of all the other management factors. Which also makes the text at lines 225-234 confusing. I also found the caption confusing. Is the conformity factors somehow scaled according to the number of conformity factors? or is it simply showing the number of conformity factors spread across classifications?

7 - It would make it easier for the reader if the same colors were used for classifications through the article.

8 - The location of lines 192-201 and Table 3 in the article is confusing since the section 4.1 does not discuss it. It should be more relevant to have it at the beginning of section  where strength and weakness analysis takes place.

9 - There are 2 sections named 4.2

10 - In the strength -weakness figures (eg. Figure 9) Acess should be corrected as access.

11- At Figures 9-12 the value of the weakness/strength is displayed as an area chart which leads to false interpretation of results. eg. in Figure 10 services does not have a weakness factor yet its background suggest it has. Instead a bar graph can be used to avoid misinterpretation.

12- The figures within the article have very different font sizes and resolutions. On paper some are very blurred and some are very hard to read.

13- Line 454 "The most important strength"

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions, we carried out all of them, please see the file attached. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The Authors offer a very interesting analysis of the Beach Certification Schemes, especially in Brazil.

I like very much the paper because it contributes  to increase the scarce empirical bibliography on the applicability of beach certification schemes to Latin America and especially to Brazil is very appreciable.

However I miss some bibliography that I think It should be collected in the Introduction of the paper:

1. Merino, F and M.A. Prats (2020). Sustainable beach management and promotion of the local tourist industry: Can blue flags be a good driver of this balance?, Oceans & Coastal Management, Volume 198, 1 December, 105359 http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2020.105359. 
2. Mir-Gual, M., Pons, G.X., Martín-Prieto, J. A. and Rodríguez-Perea, A. (2015). A critical view of the Blue Flag beaches in Spain using environmental variables, Ocean & Coastal Management, 105, March, 106-115.
3. Sasidharan, V., Sirakayab, E. and Kerstetter, D. (2002). Developing countries and tourism ecolabels, Tourism Management, 23, 161–174.
4. Saayman, M. and Saayman, A. (2017). How Important Are Blue Flag Awards in Beach Choice?, Journal of Coastal Research, 33(6), 1436 -1447.
5. Capaci S., Scorcu, A.E. and Vici, L. (2015). Seaside tourism and eco-labels: The economic impact of Blue Flags, Tourism Management, 47, 88-96.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions, we carried out all of them, please see the file. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf