Analysis of spanish coastal tourism on the national, regional and local levels

Resumen

Coastal tourism is a fast-growing economic driver worldwide. Spain is a bright example of a coastal country with a leading position in the global tourism market, especially with the ‘sun and sea’ product. Tourism plays a vital importance for Spain because it represents 14.2% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and 14.5% of national employment. However, for the last 69 years ‘sun and sea’ tourism acquired a mass character due to the fast-growing number of arriving tourists yearly. Moreover, the majority of coastal zones were heavily transformed for convenient urban and tourism services often without proper management and control. The aforementioned factors became a reason for various environmental, social, and economic issues, which compromise the potentially prosperous future for both coastal zones and their business activities. To keep Spanish coastal tourism top ranked in the world is an essential task, which implies environmental preservation and provision of high-level services in the long term. Scientists in the field state that adoption of a sustainable management model and green practices will allow policymakers to alleviate the impact of climate change, protect fragile coastal zones, form an environmentally responsible society, and provide growing economic benefits and quality of life for seaside settlements. To design an adequate management model for the development of sustainable tourism, a diagnosis of current ecological, social and economic problems provoked by coastal tourism in the most demanded seaside destinations of Spain on national, regional and local levels has to be accomplished. Thus, a competitive assessment of the most visited Spanish seaside destination at the national and regional levels was performed to complete the main goal of this investigation. Monitoring of issues connected with an adverse impact of coastal tourism at the local level was accomplished by questionnaires with beach-goers and restaurant holders as one of the main stakeholders of coastal tourism. This survey evaluated the awareness and attitude of the referred tourism stakeholders about sustainable development and their actions towards sustainable development and mitigation of the impact of climate change. The knowledge and attitude of people correlates with their impact, positive or negative, on the environment. Moreover, an understanding of public opinion and behaviour is an essential part of the creation of a harmonious and sustainable model of coastal tourism development. The thesis results demonstrated that the most competitive destinations for coastal tourism are the regions of: The Canary Islands, Catalonia, Valencia, and Andalusia. Nevertheless, Catalonia, Valencia, and especially Andalusia are undergoing significant negative ecological episodes. The outcomes of questionnaires with restaurant directors demonstrated that the model of sustainable development and green practices was poorly adopted in the studied zones. Moreover, 85% of tourists who participated in the survey have a low or medium level of environmental consciousness, this in turn means that the majority of tourists, with high probability, do not behave in an environmentally friendly manner during vacations. Here, we can conclude that policymakers still have a colossal amount of work to design and adopt a proper management model of sustainable development involving all coastal stakeholders to reach sustainability and maintain the quality of coastal tourism in Spain during the long term.