Tourism as a Sociotechnical Work System: An HF/E Problem Map From Key-Informant Elicitation in Santa Catarina, Brazil

Tourism systems are often addressed through infrastructure and promotion, yet their performance depends on complex sociotechnical interactions across agencies, work practices, and information flows. This paper frames state-level tourism governance as a human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) problem, grounded in socio-technical systems engineering and human-centered design (ISO 9241-210; ISO 6385). A qualitative key-informant semi-structured interview with a senior tourism practitioner was conducted to elicit work-as-done, system constraints, and coordination dynamics, consistent with cognitive task analysis approaches. Reflexive thematic analysis identified six interrelated challenge clusters: governance and workforce qualification gaps, environmental constraints, mobility bottlenecks, demand concentration, risk management gaps, and fragmented service structures. These findings are synthesized into an HF/E problem map that characterizes tourism as a distributed work system with coordination breakdowns, variable capacity, and safety-relevant dependencies. The paper illustrates how standards-informed HF/E approaches can support analysis and redesign in complex public service systems.