**4. Conclusions**

This article sought to o ffer a comprehensive explanation of the di fferent components that need to be integrated in an accurate model of new tourism product development. This study di ffers from other studies on the development of new tourism products by proposing a circular and not a linear model and by o ffering an innovative approach built around the design, evaluation, development, and introduction of innovative tourism products in a way that the new tourism product can be continuously re-evaluated, improved, or discontinued. Furthermore, the process is based on the core resources of the destination.

The starting point is the concept of service, that is, the type of products that should be developed or re-evaluated, in order to identify the resources required to create the new services, which must correspond as much as possible to destinations' core resources. Concurrently, project managers have to define the needs of customers for whom the products are intended.

The development process must ensure that the new services do not present shortcomings, although considering only the products' quality is not a guarantee that they will provide memorable experiences, because customers in many situations will take for granted that the service quality will be flawless. Thus, the working group should deliberately proceed with designing scenarios and ensuring indispensable conditions for visitors' well-being to ensure that new products exceed customers' expectations and foster unique, memorable, or transformative experiences. Contrary to what has been repeatedly stated elsewhere, experiences cannot be created as these occur within each individual and they are influenced by multiple factors related to personalities, previous experiences or expectations.

After the resources on which products are based are determined and customers' needs are identified, the design of the process of new tourism product development begins, respecting the information gathered in each phase and always taking into account that the process is nonlinear. Sometimes, the project team must return to previous stages to conduct reformulations that more fully respect the assumptions made in order to validate the project's continuation. The process does not end with the new or re-engineered products' introduction into the market because, after every launch, an evaluation must be carried out and, based on the results, the development process then restarts.

This model fills a gap in the existing literature, providing destination managemen<sup>t</sup> companies and private businesses with a comprehensive conceptual framework for innovative tourism product development, which is urgently needed to ensure interfirm and destination competitiveness.

This study's main limitation is that the proposed model of innovative tourism product development has not ye<sup>t</sup> been tested empirically. This will be a challenge for future research.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, M.C.S.; formal analysis, J.A.C.S.; funding acquisition, J.A.C.S.; methodology, M.C.S.; supervision, A.F. and C.C.; writing—original draft, M.C.S.; writing—review and editing, J.C.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This paper is financed by National Funds provided by FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology through project UIDB/04020/2020.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study, collection, analyses, interpretation of data, writing of the manuscript, and decision to publish the results.
