Tourism planning at local level. Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Tourism is currently a structural economic sector. According to the UNWTO, in 2017 the sector reached 1,250 million of international tourists, with Spain being the third largest destination in the world, based on the number of tourists and the income derived from tourism. Catalonia is the first Spanish destination (concentrates 25% of international tourism), being Barcelona the fourth European destination and the seventeenth world, according to the MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index (2018). The expansion of living standards, the technological revolution and the improvement of transport and logistics contribute to this expansion. But also the rise of social values that place experiential or experiential tourism in the foreground. All this, assuming that access to leisure constitutes a social conquest of advanced societies. That is why the economic dynamism of many territories (from the local to the global environment), depends to a large extent on their tourism development, which requires putting value on own resources, creating the necessary tourist infrastructure and betting on sustainable management of the sector.

Keywords: Territory, Tourism resource, Tourism product, Tourism management,

Tourism sustainability.