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This article seeks to analyze the municipal distribution of creative workers in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and specifically to explore how tourism destinations behave in relation to t...

We analysed the determinants of the length of stay for tourists arriving in a Mediterranean coastal destination by means of high-speed rail (HSR) service. This study is based on data obtained from a survey completed by HSR passengers returning from holiday in Costa Daurada (Catalonia). The empirical analysis is based on estimations made using a survival model. The influence of the availability of HSR service on tourists’ destination choices together with the tourists’ profiles, party structure or accommodation characteristics was used as explanatory variables. Results revealed that the existence of HSR services played a minor role in tourists’ decision of whether to visit the Costa Daurada. Also, evidence suggests that the existence of the HSR station would only affect the length of stay of those tourists who stay overnight in second residences.

El objetivo del presente trabajo es discutir el papel y el alcance del turismo en los procesos de urbanización del litoral en Argentina y, por extensión, en Latinoamérica. Para ello, se identifican grupos de ciudades en el litoral de Buenos Aires según su dinámica turística de acuerdo a los cambios y continuidades demográficas y económicas que han experimentado durante el periodo 2001 - 2010.Los resultados obtenidos permiten entender de manera contextualizada la naturaleza y funcionalidad turística y urbana de las diferentes ciudades del litoral de la provincia. Así, se han identificado seis grupos de ciudades según los procesos de cambio que ha provocado en ellas el turismo y se ha evidenciado la diversidad, complejidad y dinamismo que presenta cada tipo de conglomerado según sus características particulares. Todo ello ha permitido visualizar la diversidad de destinos que existen en el litoral de la provincia según su situación urbana particular y su evolución turística reciente. Por último, se ofrecen evidencias empíricas que respaldan la concepción que el turismo no solamente tiene efectos diferenciales en los procesos de urbanización, sino que, en función de las circunstancias locales, genera dinámicas específicas que deben explicarse a partir del conocimiento de la realidad económica y la identidad de cada lugar. The aim of this paper is to discuss the role and the impact of tourism in Argentina ́s and thus Latin America ́s coastal urban development processes. Hence, groups of cities with different tourism dynamics are identified on the coast of Buenos Aires according to their demographic and economic changes and continuities during the period 2001-2010.The results allow us to understand in a contextualized way the nature and tourist and urban functionality of the different cities on the coast of the province. Thus, six groups of cities have been identified according to the processes of change that tourism has caused in them and the diversity, complexity and dynamism that each type of cluster presents accor-ding to its particular characteristics has been evidenced. All this has allowed to visualize the diversity of destinations that exist in the littoral of the province according to its particular urban situation and its recent tourist evolution.Finally, empirical evidence is offered to support the conception that tourism not only has differential effects on urbanization processes, but that, depending on local circumstances, it generates specific dynamics that must be explained based on the knowledge of the economy and the identity of each place.

Two complementary approaches are commonly used to study human behavior. The first one assumes the existence of a self-motivated individual, commonly referred to as agency. The second approach considers structure and situational variables such as social context and weather as the primary factors that direct human behavior. In the current study, GPS information that was analyzed using Geographical Information System (GIS) was utilized to scrutinize the time–space activity pattern of 276 tourists visiting in PortAventura theme park, a recreational tourist destination located in Catalonia, Spain in high temporal resolution. Since theme parks are highly controlled artificial environments, it is convenient to gauge both the characteristics of the park itself and of the activity patterns of visitors within it. The chapter investigates how structural factors such as temporal constraints (length of visit, number of planned visits) and the location of attractions on the one hand and visitor characteristics such as nationality and familiarity on the other affect the activity of theme park visitors. The results revealed that structural factors were more useful in predicting participants’ behavior than did personal characteristics and preferences.

This paper discusses two recurring land use issues that are conventionally accepted when analyzing most of the Mediterranean mass coastal tourism destinations: the limited role of planning and the supposedly standardized nature of the resulting landscape. Based on a specific case study in the Catalan coastline, this paper presents analytical metrics and empirical data showing that, despite the controversial nature of the resulting urbanization and contrary to this common understanding, urban planning tools have been relevant in the shaping of the landscape of coastal settlements dominated by tourism and second homes. More precisely, the paper analyzes how, on the Catalan coast, partial planning tools have been able to create since the 1960s specific urban pieces with temporary residence uses that, beyond their actual limitations, shaped differentiated landscape structures with a particular landscape identity. To reach this conclusion, we have applied a set of spatial metrics at different scales to the analysis of the urban partial plans approved in the destination. Results allow the identification of the basic urban landscape patterns of the area, facilitate the understanding of the role of regulatory planning tools, and highlight the role of its evolution during the last 50 years in the process of the destination urban landscape shaping and transformation.

The aim of this paper is to study the perceived image specialisation of multiscalar tourism destinations as reflected in tourists' online user-generated content (UGC). For this purpose, perceived image and place specialisation among subregional brands within a regional destination are studied in the case of Catalonia. The analysis consists of a computerised quantitative content analysis based on keyword counts, aggregated into attraction factor categories, of more than 128,000 travel blog and review entries. First, the density of each attraction factor is analysed for each subregional brand. Second, spatial coefficients are applied to further ascertain the relative specialisation of each subregional brand. Results show strong perceived specialisation between subregional brands within Catalonia as a multiscalar destination and highlight the role of each one in the building of the image of Catalonia as a whole.

The article studies the relationship between the characteristics of the built environment and the spatial behaviour of cruise passengers in a city. For this purpose, the mobility of cruise passengers visiting the city of Tarragona (Catalonia) is monitored by means of GPS tracking technologies and analysed through the use of GIS. Consideration has been given to diverse and multiple indicators related to the syntax of the urban space, its physical attributes, the economic activity and the visibility of tourist points of interest. Results show that the visibility of tourist points of interest and the type of economic activity have more influence than other factors related to the characteristics of the urban layout. The resulting information is particularly valuable for city management.

Even though little research has been undertaken on urban tourism and walkability, it represents a major theme with respect to the visitor use of city, especially in successful urban destinations around the world that are currently confronting deep challenges due to their very attractiveness. This chapter examines the paradoxes associated with urban tourism and walkability, argues that walkability and walkable urban places appear as a fertile arena for the sustainable future of urban tourism and highlights the need to adopt an approach that interconnects urban tourism with the wider domain of urban planning, management and governance.

Climate change conditions the sustainability of coastal destinations. This paper looks at the physical conditions that determine exposure and sensitivity to and risk from climate change and explores the sociopolitical contextual factors that determine the vulnerability of destinations. We define a destination’s vulnerability to climate change as being a reduction in its attractiveness caused by climate change combined with the consequences of adaptation and mitigation strategies. To be more specific, this paper aims to discuss the linkage between policymaking and the vulnerability of coastal destinations to climate change. We look at how this vulnerability is determined by decision-making, policies and strategies and propose an innovative analytical framework to assess vulnerability using a policy analysis approach. It is our intention to combine a content analysis of policy documents with an analysis of the perceptions and opinions of the stakeholders that influence decision-making. The paper deals with the complex, multiple, dynamic and fuzzy attributes that characterize all the items that make up this kind of research: climate change (phenomenon), vulnerability (variable), policy analysis (method), policy contents and stakeholder perceptions (indicators), coastal destinations (territorial system) and tourism (activity and policy).

Outlining the need for fresh perspectives on change in tourism, this book offers a theoretical overview and empirical examples of the potential synergies of applying evolutionary economic geography ...

Report on a joint meeting of the Research Group for Sustainability and Territory of the University of the Balearic Islands, the Research Group on Territorial Analysis and Tourism Studies of Rovira ...

El artículo analiza la influencia de la disponibilidad de servicios de Alta Velocidad Ferroviaria en la elección del destino entre los turistas que utilizan este medio de transporte. A partir de datos provenientes de encuestas a viajeros de la estación del Camp de Tarragona se ha aplicado un método probabilístico que ha permitido medir el incremento de probabilidad de visitar la Costa Dorada causado por la existencia de esta estación. Los resultados demuestran un leve incremento de la probabilidad de visitar el destino (14,1 %). Se ha demostrado también que este incremento de probabilidad varia significativamente en función de las características sociodemográficas del turista, del viaje y de su estancia.

The ability of medium‐sized and large leisure parks to generate external economies, create a new image for specific places and catalyse the location of economic activities is examined in the context of PortAventura, Catalonia. PortAventura theme park, established in Salou in 1995, is the result of a regional and local public destination rejuvenation policy started during the 1980s. It is currently the largest theme park in Spain and the second largest in Europe. Having reached the 4 million visitors‐a‐year threshold in 2007, since the late 1990s it has gone from being a classic leisure park to becoming a whole entertainment complex. Research outcomes presented in this paper discuss the extent to which Salou and its surrounding area, the central Costa Daurada, the mass tourism destination where the park is sited, are enjoying renewed expansion and are transforming the consolidated tourism business into new recreational, cultural and entertainment opportunities.

This paper explores the effects of high-speed rail (HSR) services on the destination choice of first-time tourists and repeat tourists arriving in the Costa Daurada, a mature coastal destination in Catalonia, using HSR services. The analysis is based on a probabilistic method and uses data from a survey of HSR passengers at the Camp de Tarragona HSR station during the summer of 2014. It concludes that the increase in probability of visiting this particular destination because of the existence of the HSR station among this specific group of visitors is quite larger in the case of first-time tourists (23.9%) than in repeat tourists (12.9%). At the same time, significant differences are found in the profiles of both segments of HSR passengers. Cet article propose d’explorer les effets du train à grande vitesse (TGV) dans le choix de la Costa Daurada, en Catalogne, comme destination touristique. Nous distinguons les voyageurs qui ont visité pour la première fois la destination de ceux qui ont visité la destination autrefois. On a appliqué une méthode probabiliste de causalité pour calculer l’augmentation de la probabilité de fréquentation de cette destination touristique grâce à l’existence de la gare du TGV. Les résultats nous montrent que la probabilité est plus élevée pour les usagers du TGV qui ont visité pour la première fois la destination (23,9%-12,9%). On a relevé aussi des différences importantes dans les caractéristiques sociodémographiques des voyageurs ainsi que dans les caractéristiques du voyage et du séjour.

In recent years, many articles have been published about the study of user-generated content (UGC) data in the domains of tourism and hospitality, in particular concerning quantitative and qualitative content analysis of travel blogs and online travel reviews (OTR). In general, researchers have worked on more or less population-representative samples of travel diaries, of tens or hundreds of files, which enables their manual processing. However, due to their dramatic growth, especially in the case of hospitality OTRs, this article proposes a method for semi-automatic downloading, arranging, cleaning, debugging, and analysing large-scale travel blog and OTR data. The main goal is to classify the collected webpages by dates and destinations and to be able to perform offline content analysis of the written text as provided by the author. This methodology is applied to analyse about 85,000 diaries of tourists who visited Catalonia between 2004 and 2013, and significant results are obtained in terms of content analysis.

International audience; The article analyses the relationship between leisure parks and the urban world and begins with the hypothesis that the leisure park may serve as a model for metropolitan reconstruction at the same time that it is a major component of it. This signifies that the leisure park, as an image and as an object, ‘permeates’ the modern city, both as a microcosm through specific design features, and as a macrocosm through the design of the entire metropolis. The authors propose to verify this assumption in the case of two French leisure parks. They present, after a general literature review, the results of a survey held in 2012 in Futuroscope and Disneyland Paris, which articulates a historical and statistical evaluation of the impact of these leisure parks in the suburban area with an interpretation of urban symbols and urban images inside both parks. The comparison of the place of urbanity in the two leisure parks and the place of parks in the dynamics of the two urban areas, in these two contrasting places, show the importance of genuine models of urbanity in leisure space, but also its diversity.; L’article analyse la relation existant entre les parcs de loisir et la ville, il part de l’hypothèse que le parc de loisir est devenu un modèle de référence pour la conception des métropoles en même temps qu’il en constitue presque toujours une composante spatiale spécifique. Cela implique que le parc de loisir, en tant qu’image et en tant qu’objet, « infuse » la ville moderne, et ceci aussi bien à l’échelle micro, puisque l’on retrouve dans certaines zones urbaines des éléments spécifiques empruntés aux parcs de loisir, qu’à l’échelle macro, dans la démarche de planification métropolitaine. Les auteurs proposent de vérifier cette hypothèse en se penchant sur deux parcs de loisir français. Ils présentent, après une revue générale de la littérature, les résultats d’une enquête menée en 2012 au Futuroscope et à Disneyland Paris. Leur démarche articule une approche historique et une évaluation statistique de l’impact de ces parcs dans les zones périurbaines avec une interprétation des symboles urbains et des images urbaines utilisées à l’intérieur de ces deux parcs. La comparaison de la place de l’urbanité dans les deux parcs de loisirs et de la place des deux parcs dans les dynamiques des deux métropoles, dans ces deux cas contrastés, montre certes l’importance des modèles urbains originaux dans l’espace de loisir, mais aussi leur diversité.

Aims to map out the past and present of the tourism geographies sub-discipline within - and more importantly - beyond the English language contributions, and learn from the historical trajectories as well as experiences of tourism geographers working in different cultural and linguistic contexts.

This chapter reflects upon the trajectory of research in the geography of tourism in Spain. It begins with a review, including the evolution of the main topics present in the subdiscipline, with a special focus on developments since the 1990s. This is followed by an analysis of the current role and potential impact of academic tourism geography and a discussion on the recent growth in the publication of research results in international journals. Of importance are the institutional factors that explain the increasing recognition of research on the geography of tourism in Spain. Finally, the chapter discusses the hegemony of positivist approaches pivoting on land use, local and regional development, impact analysis, and landscape transformation, as well as the emerging links between Spanish tourism geography and the international mainstream schools of thought.

The Geography of Tourism in Spain is now at a par in terms of its scientific production with other European countries. Since the middle of the '80s the quality and volume of contributions is analogous to the rest of the European Union, although as a part of University Geography in Spain it has not achieved the level of dedication reached by other subjects considering the importance of tourist activities to the economy, the society and the territory of Spain. It could be said that the Geography of Tourism in Spain is in the international vanguard in dealing with Mediterranean coastal tourism, with the relationships between the residential real estate and tourism sectors and with aspects related to tourism and leisure in rural and protected areas.

In this article, we illustrate the importance of time in understanding theme park visitor activity patterns. The study that is described here made use of the GPS (Global Positioning System) technology to track and record the time–space trajectories of visitors at the PortAventura theme park in Catalonia, Spain. The findings suggest that visitors to theme parks do demonstrate distinct diurnal and intradiurnal mass behavior patterns or rhythms of activity. The investigation of temporal activity patterns holds two main advantages: the first is that compared with spatial activity patterns, it is more straightforward to aggregate, present, and compare temporal patterns; the second is that the external validity of temporal activity patterns is generally higher than that of spatial activity patterns. That is to say that temporal activity patterns are more likely to repeat themselves in other environments. Practical, theoretical, and methodological insights that can be relevant to both researchers and sit...