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This study examined the impact of COVID-19 on recreational walking while on vacation, a relevant activity among tourists especially in urban destinations. We surveyed visitors to Costa Daurada, an urban coastal destination in Catalonia in August 2020. Only 5% of participants reported lower recreational walking levels compared to normal circumstances; 75% reported similar levels; and 20% reported higher levels. Higher recreational walking levels were associated with visiting local amenities or strolling and with a higher level of perceived safety from COVID-19 when walking. Higher perceived overcrowding was associated with less recreational walking. The pandemic may have altered recreational behavior while on vacation in urban settings especially by increasing outdoor activities such as recreational walking. If persistent, such behavioral changes could have relevant implications for both the tourism and recreation sectors and for local policymakers who aim to promote walkability while managing tourist pedestrian flows.

Touristification and smartization processes are commonly associated with economic growth strategies. Here we emphasize and demonstrate the need to consider the implication of these processes on social sustainability. Initial results imply that: (1) regions not specialized in tourism are associated with a lower share of population in poverty; and (2) regions’ ‘smartness’ level is negatively associated with the share of poverty. However, in regions highly specialized in tourism, smartization demonstrated an opposite association of increased intra-regional poverty. As residents’ quality of life is becoming a key policy consideration, understanding the effect of these socio-economic processes on socially sustainable growth has timely implications for regional planning, including for post-COVID-19 recovery strategies. This research has been funded by the H2020 programme, SMARTDEST project under grant agreement no. 870753.

This exploratory research aims to determine how governance is internalized in tourism destinations management organizations (DMO). Governance internalization is understood as the commitment of destination management-related organizations to the deployment of governance concepts, precepts, practices, and actions and the rolling out and exercise of their functions, responsibilities, and power. The methodology that was used is that of case studies. A total of eight organizations acknowledging different degrees of governance commitment have been analyzed through in-depth interviews and documentary reviews. For each case, two dimensions of governance—participation and coherence—have been analyzed. It has been observed how organizations with a higher or lower degree of commitment show clear equivalence between their governance vision and the level of internalization of the participation and coherence dimensions. However, a rhetorical implementation of governance concepts, precepts, practices, and actions is found among destinations with more lukewarm positions.

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.

Despite the key importance of public transportation for the accessibility, attractiveness, and sustainability of tourist areas, little is known about how the COVID-19 pandemic may have impacted its use among tourists. In response, we compared the likelihood of using transit among visitors in a Catalan coastal area based on surveys conducted in 2019 (

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.

This article uses social network analysis to measure institutional thickness in a regional tourism destination in Colombia. Through the analysis of 107 institutions, the empirical findings show that the configuration of formal interaction spaces determine the governance system of the destination turning certain institutions into hubs or authorities. The contribution of this research is two-fold. Firstly, it provides a new approach to the study of institutional thickness by applying a social network analysis methodology making possible to identify the components theoretically defined such as the role of institutional presence, levels of interaction, structures of domination, and common agendas in tourism. Secondly, it highlights the importance of understanding the role of the regional institutional environment and the governance framework of tourism destinations to better plan and manage their dynamics and effects.

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.

The article uses the spatial-temporal behaviour of cruise passengers at a given destination as an explanatory factor of their expenditure. First, it shows that different expenditure levels imply di...

Meteorological conditions determine the viability and competitiveness of socio-economic activities of any territory for many sectors, like those earmarked as priority areas in the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS). Yet, although the tourist sector is not one of those, the INDECIS project does include it.Climate services, understood as the transmission of processed information from meteorological and climatological data in a way that becomes useful for the end-user in the decision-making process, should be useful to trigger actions that adapt tourism activity to long-term trends and sudden changes of the competitive context, or else mitigate the effects that tourism generates on climatic conditions.In the framework of INDECIS project, researchers have been carried out different workshops for co-designing climate services in five European tourism destinations. The destination cases have the purpose of responding to the design of climate services taking into account the participation of different stakeholders in vulnerable destinations to Climate Change. As the main output, it has been developed different sectoral tourism indexes, which allow defining the optimum conditions to carry out tourism activities (snow tourism, sun & beach tourism, cultural tourism and outdoor tourism).The present research shows the preliminary results of the INDECIS Snow tourism Index (ISTI) through the case study of Jacetania’s County (Aragon Pyrenees). The ISTI has been co-created with the participation of local stakeholders, the Destination Management Organization (DMO), companies and end-users. Meanwhile, the economic value has been tested with tourism data from the destination, specifically offer and supply regarding the snow tourism activities. In this sense, the STI is made of three-dimensional perspectives: definition of meteorological conditions that condicionate the snow tourism (1), inclusion of other local variables, such as accessibility, infrastructures and characteristics of the ski stations (2), and consideration of the dynamics and seasonality of the destination (3). The first facet is essential for all users while the second facet is giving value specifically to skiers and the third facet is very useable as a planning tool for DMOs. The results allow validating the used methodology for the co-creation of climate services in the tourism sector. Concretely, the STI is a sectorial meteorological index for snow tourism in the Pyrenees’ Region. This index, that complements the Tourism Climate Index (TCI) and Holiday Climate Index (HCI), is based on the qualitative data received from the local agents and quantitatively transformed into a three-dimensional index for different users. Acknowledgments: INDECIS is part of ERA4CS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by FORMAS (SE), DLR (DE), BMWFW (AT), IFD (DK), MINECO (ES), ANR (FR) with co-funding by the European Union Grant 690462).

This article aims to advance the methodology for assessing the social impact of tourism research. An evaluation framework was designed to measure social impact in three stages—ex-ante, in-itinere and ex-post—and the ex-post evaluation was applied to a tourism research project, the POLITUR project, to test its validity. The collected information originated from interviews and documentary material. The analysis was structured according to six main areas—communication and promotion, policies and regulation, economic benefit, new technological resources, environment and social improvements—and four dimensions—temporal, applied, geographical and sustainability. The results are followed by a discussion of the domains and dimensions of the social impact assessment of tourism research. The need for further improvement in methods for measuring the social impact of tourism research and the importance of research that generates social impact are highlighted.

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.

This article analyses the factors that determine the mode of transport (bus, taxi or private car) chosen by tourists for transfers from a peripherally located high-speed rail station to their final destination. The study is based on a survey completed by tourists who used high-speed rail services to travel to the Costa Daurada, a tourism area on the Mediterranean coast of Southern Catalonia, Spain. The results of this study show that variables associated with the characteristics of the stay had a more decisive influence upon the decisions made by the travellers than the socio-demographic profiles of the tourists surveyed. The availability of direct public transport services for transfers from the station to the final destinations was a much more relevant factor than the cost and duration of the resulting trip. This study provides empirical evidence of the importance of accessibility for peripheral stations. In these cases, good connections via public transport apparently play a key role in both improving tourism development and promoting more sustainable mobility within the region.

This article presents an exploratory methodology to co-create climate services for the tourism sector together with local stakeholders, emphasizing focus groups as an essential step for obtaining relevant data throughout the process. The article describes the user engagement for defining the optimal conditions for tourism in four different types of destinations in terms of tourist specialisation in Spain (Jacetania Council in the Aragon Pyrenees, the city of Calvia on the island of Majorca; the city of Barcelona and the Barcelona Coast) and Italy (Sila National Park) This methodology involves a sequence of steps to extract and validate such information through engagement, with destination stakeholders along the value chain (from accommodation managers to destination planners as well as final users). The process facilitates the design of numerical indices based on the information collected (from qualitative to quantitative data). Our methodology is suitable for application in other contexts and tourism activities where the subjective perception of weather and climate plays a role, as well as in other sectors.

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.

Evolutionary and relational approaches to economic development are gaining ground in geography as a discipline, although in the subfield of tourism geography, their potential is only just becoming recognised. This article focuses on the evolution of mature tourism destinations, taking the path dependency concept forward from the notion of path creation into the new domain of path plasticity. Drawing on the notion of cultural political economy, we examine how tourism destinations can break with path dependency routines incrementally and move steadily towards different future paths, which may recast tourism in a different light in the overall “urban” context of the destination. Using a case study of a Mediterranean coastal destination on Catalonia's Costa Daurada, we explore the inter-tangled tourism and urban development processes in relation to the socio-spatial dimensions of urban change. The article argues for a wider range of social and cultural criteria in the analysis of tourism evolution – a...

The concept of governance has achieved a growing presence in academic debates in recent years, although it has not done so in the same way in the area of tourism destination management. The research presented here allows us to see how the actors in the Catalan tourism system perceive and understand governance and identifies dimensions and models of governance. A categorization comprising seven dimensions of tourism governance (participation, coherence, responsibility, effectiveness, know-how/quality, openness, and simplification) is provided through the construction of a semantic network based on the actors' understanding of their own practices. By applying principal component analysis to the set of variables associated with each category, five different models of governance approaches are obtained (Transparent Strategy, Liable Outcomes, Hermetic Results-oriented-ism, Democratic Moralism, and Democratic Bureaucracy).

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.

This paper adopts the concepts of strategic coupling and upgrading—key notions in global production network theories—under an integrated evolutionary and relational economic geography approach. It aims to understand the role of trans-local networks in increasing the innovativeness of local firms and, as a consequence, in shaping the evolutionary path of a destination. Empirical evidence derives from interviews with key stakeholders, complemented with secondary data. In doing so, the paper examines the influence of alliances between local stakeholders and global intermediaries operating in the Russian market in a Catalan destination from 1994 to 2013. The nature and dynamics of the strategic coupling patterns identified— cooperative , mediated , self-interested , and captive —as well as their upgrading outcomes are discussed.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the usefulness of big data analytics to support smart destinations by studying the online image of Barcelona (a leading smart city and tourist destination) as transmitted via social media through the analysis of more than 100,000 relevant travel blogs and online travel reviews (OTRs) written in English by tourists who have visited the city in the last 10 years. The proposed methodology used in this paper facilitates the massive gathering, cleaning up, and analysis of tourism-related user-generated content (UGC) from the most suitable sources, and helps to define the transmitted image of the city through collecting and processing large volumes of digital data. It is also used to extract business intelligence (BI) from OTRs concerning visits to Barcelona’s main landmark/attraction, La Sagrada Familia. The findings of this massive content analysis of information from a trustworthy source, UGC data, is very useful in appling BI to destination management, both in order to develop and assess marketing strategies and to improve branding and positioning policies among tourism and marketing organizations. It reinforces the ability of cities such as Barcelona to develop a smart city and destination concept, as well as a strategy for themselves.

L’arribada de l’alta velocitat ferroviària (AVF) a Tarragona l’any 2006 afegeix una altra opció de transport per als turistes que es desplacen fins a una destinació litoral com és la Costa Daurada (Catalunya). Mitjançant l’aplicació d’un mètode probabilístic causal hem calculat l’increment en la probabilitat que aquesta destinació turística hagi estat visitada degut a l’existència de l’estació d’AVF. L’estudi s’ha basat en els resultats d’una enquesta a passatgers espanyols que han fet les seves vacances a la Costa Daurada. Els resultats mostren que l’increment de probabilitat és més gran entre els residents en regions més allunyades. Aquest increment és d’un 12% entre els passatgers espanyols procedents d’Aragó i un d’un 16,6% entre els de Madrid, regions que representen gairebé dues terceres parts dels passatgers de la mostra. També s’ha demostrat que hi ha importants diferències de caràcter sociodemogràfic i en relació amb les característiques del viatge i de l’estada., The arrival of high-speed rail (HSR) services in Tarragona in 2006 adds another transportation option for tourists who travel to a coastal destination such as the Costa Daurada of Catalonia. The increased likelihood of visiting this destination due to the existence of a HSR station has been analyzed using a causal probabilistic method. The study is based on the results of a survey of Spanish HSR passengers who spend their holidays on the Costa Daurada. The results show that the increase in the probability is higher among tourists from remote regions. Specifically, it is 16.6% higher for tourists from Madrid and 12% higher for tourists from Aragon. These two regions account for almost two-thirds of the passengers in the sample. There are also differences in sociodemographic, trip and stay characteristics related to the tourist’s origin., La llegada de la alta velocidad ferroviaria (AVF) a Tarragona en 2006 añade otra opción de transporte para los turistas que se desplazan hasta un destino litoral como es la Costa Dorada (Cataluña). Mediante la aplicación de un método probabilístico causal hemos calculado el incremento en la probabilidad de que este destino turístico haya sido visitado debido a la existencia de la estación de AVF Camp de Tarragona. El trabajo se ha basado en los resultados de una encuesta a pasajeros españoles de la AVF que han realizado sus vacaciones en la Costa Dorada. Los resultados muestran que el incremento de probabilidad es mayor entre aquellos que residen en regiones más alejadas. Este incremento es de un 12% entre los pasajeros españoles de la AVF procedentes de Aragón y un 16,6% entre los de Madrid, regiones que representan casi dos terceras partes de los pasajeros de la muestra. Se ha demostrado también la existencia de importantes diferencias de carácter sociodemográfico y en relación con las características del viaje y de la estancia en función de la región de origen de los pasajeros., L’arrivée du train à grande vitesse (TGV) à Tarragona en 2006 ajoute une autre option de transport pour les touristes qui veulent se déplacer vers une destination touristique comme celle de la Costa Daurada (en Catalogne). Nous avons 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, en fonction de la région d’origine des voyageurs espagnols en vacances sur la Costa Daurada. Les résultats nous montrent que la probabilité est plus élevée pour les touristes qui habitent dans les régions les plus éloignées: 12% pour ceux d’Aragon et 16,6% pour ceux de Madrid. Ces deux régions sont les lieux d’origine de presque les deux tiers des voyageurs de l’échantillon. Nous avons aussi relevé des différences importantes dans les caractéristiques sociodémographiques des voyageurs ainsi que dans les caractéristiques du voyage et du séjour.

There seems little doubt that Low-Cost Carriers (LCCs) have had a substantial impact on the tourism sector, with the generation of volumes of tourists to emerging and mature destinations. However, little is known about how the tourists' profile depends on the influence exercised by an LCC in the decision-making process for visiting a certain destination. This is the focus of this study which main aim is to identify and understand two types of travellers: travellers who visited the destination mainly due to the availability of low-cost flights, and travellers who declare they would have visited the destination anyway using different means. Methodologically, we adopt the Causal Chain Approach to measure the causation link between the availability of low-cost flight routes and tourists' decisions to visit a certain destination. Our empirical case study examines the profile of travellers using a Ryanair route from East Midlands airport (England) to Reus airport (Catalonia).

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).

10.1080/14616688.2014.925965 Analytical approaches from emergent paradigms in economic geography ¿ namely, evolutionary economic geography (EEG) and relational economic geography (REG) ¿ can help to advance and integrate extant research in tourism geography on destinations¿ dynamics and organisation. Taking into account concepts such as human agency, contextuality and path dependence, the paper conceptualises local tourism destinations¿ evolution as a complex, path- and place-dependent process that is determined by the action and interaction of stakeholders and their ability to adapt or create new paths, as well as to survive in response to local and global changes. Hence, it discusses the bidirectional effects between stakeholder practices and local tourism destinations¿ evolutionary performance. Furthermore, it attempts to increase the understanding of how and why destinations change over time, which is valuable for policy formation and to improve local tourism destinations¿ competitiveness and sustainability. All in all, the paper presents theoretical insights from EEG and REG to facilitate understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the evolution of destinations and examines the advantages of building an integrated evolutionary and relational approach. This also means an opportunity to integrate the geographical analysis of tourism destinations into mainstream thinking on economic geography.

Researchers from different social sciences are increasingly interested in studying the role of institutions in regional development. Nevertheless, from the perspective of regional tourism development analysis, the role of institutions has been explored limitedly. Based on the institutional thickness approach, this study analyzed the role played by institutions in regional tourism development through a qualitative research procedure applied on a Latin American region. The study examined the institutional presence, the levels of interaction, the structures of domination and/or coalition patterns, and the common agendas in 28 institutions related to tourism in the region of Antioquia, Colombia. Results from this empirical analysis show that institutions play a decisive role in regional tourism development for reasons such as the allocation of economic resources, leadership, and interaction among stakeholders. Knowing these dynamics can be useful to boost better management and planning of tourism destinations throughout governance, coordination, and common agendas, and to enrich the debate on regional tourism development.

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 ...

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.

El turismo de sol y playa es una actividad estratégica para la economía española que depende altamente de los recursos naturales que la posibilitan. Para garantizar su competitividad y su sostenibilidad futura es imprescindible la incorporación de medidas ambientales en la política turística. El análisis crítico argumentativo de los tres últimos planes turísticos aprobados por el gobierno de España permite observar el alcance y las limitaciones de la incorporación de tales medidas. Los poderes públicos reconocen la persistencia de los problemas ambientales pero esto no siempre se ha plasmado en los planes. ABSTRACT Coastal tourism is a strategic activity for the Spanish economy, highly dependent on natural resources. Tourism policies must incorporate environmental measures to ensure tourism competitiveness and future sustainability. The scope and limitation of this incorporation is analyzed by means of an argumentative critical analysis of the last three tourism plans approved by the Spanish administration. Public authorities recognize the persistence of environmental problems but this has not always been translated into the plans.

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...

In this short paper we develop an integral framework for the study of tourist mobility using GPS technology. After a review of tourism mobility research, this article introduces the two main elements of a visitor tracking technology developed by this research team: the methodology of collection and clean-up of data, and the analytic tools, using a web environment. Both aspects have been piloted in a visitor tracking project in the historical city of Tarragona, Spain, and could be extended and adapted to other destination types.

Geospatial information is commonly used in tourism to facilitate activity planning, especially in a context of limited information on the territory, as it is common in the case of complex and heterogeneous tourism destination regions where the constrained spatial activity of visitor is likely to generate inefficiencies in the use of assets and resources, and hinder visitor satisfaction. Because of the large amount of spatial and non-spatial data associated with different resources and activities, it is a logical choice to use geographic information systems (GIS) for storing, managing, analyzing, and visualizing the data. Nevertheless, in order to facilitate personalized recommendations to visitors, interaction with Artificial Intelligence is needed. This chapter presents SigTur/E-Destination, a tourism recommender system based on a semantically-enriched GIS that provides regional tourist organizations and the industry with a new powerful tool for the sustainable management of their destinations. The recommendation system uses innovative Artificial Intelligence techniques, such as a hybrid method that integrates content-based and collaborative filtering and clustering methodologies that improve computational time.