| Resumo: | Sustainability in the tourism sector has, in recent years, been raising not only a concern within the discussion of development strategies but also an area of intervention in terms of balance between residents’ quality of life and the perspective of economic benefit and investment attraction for the regions involved. This research applied a qualitative methodology, based on five semi-structured interviews with academics and governmental organizations in both cities of Porto and Barcelona. A comparative analysis was carried out between the cities of Porto and Barcelona, which despite being distant in terms of their positioning and development as destinations, consolidate the research, in arguments presented by stakeholders of both regions, regarding the perspective of tourism development, based on the pillars of sustainability supported in the literature. The interviews provided information through open questions, with the opportunity to reformulate the issues during the interviews, as a crucial aspect to obtain information. The main conclusions show that the tourism growth in the city of Porto had a crucial weight in its development, namely in the remodeling of the public and private buildings, enhancement of the social and cultural heritage by the residents, and stimulation of the local economy and subsequent increase of jobs in the sector. Considering Barcelona, its positioning differs from that of Porto and aspects such as the dissatisfaction of residents with the excessive tourism demand and the lack of implementation of visible strategies to preserve permanent residence in the city, the absence of a demand segmentation strategy in the region, the reduced average stay that generates an increase in environmental impacts in the city, is also induced by the strong concentration of tourism attractions in some districts.
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