The city of Bilbao has made use of a museum as one of the multiple means to restructure its former industrial base. However, the effectiveness of this costly formula is not always clear. Three major issues have arisen: the effects of Guggenheim Museum Bilbao on Bilbao's image, the effects on overnight stays, and the effects on the local economy. There is little debate about the first issue, and room for more evidence on the second and third issues. The aim is to quantify the museum's impact on tourism and employment and to calculate its yield (Return on Investment and Net Present Value). The approach adopted is the quantitative analysis of statistical data to try to isolate the economic contribution of the Guggenheim.
Bilbao is an outstanding test case for the impact of an internationally famous cultural facility in a context that otherwise does not lend itself to large flows of tourism. Although early for a complete impact study, the aim of this study is to quantify the influence of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in the attraction of tourism and to identify the potential factors that explain such impact in the short run.
The mission of a museum is essentially cultural, however this is not the case for all museums. There are a minority of universally famous museums, like the Tate Liverpool, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Tate Modern London, the new forthcoming Louvre-Lens (France), the Guggenheim-Hermitage in Vilnius (Lithuania) and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) whose principal aim is the re-activation (and/or the diversification) of the economy of their territories, in addition to the obvious cultural aim. The effectiveness of a large heritage investment in developing a city depends on at least four variables. First, heritage investments become effective employment creators only to the extent that they become effective tourism magnets. Second, the impact of investments on cultural heritage could be negative if the heritage industry is a big portion of the whole economy. Third, the more the redevelopment zone's markets are integrated, the easier the absorption of price tensions caused by urban revitalization. Fourth, the greater the productivity of the city's economy, the greater the absorption of price tensions. The aim of this essay is to give empirical support to these hypotheses for the case of Bilbao and the Guggenheim Museum. Copyright (c) 2008 The Author. Journal Compilation (c) 2008 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Policy makers and tourism developers must understand visitors' mobility behavior and how they consume space and tourism resources in order to set up sustainable cultural tourism destinations. With this in mind, it should also be pointed out that the mobility patterns of tourists in urban destinations are mainly located in the city center (spatial centrality), the analysis of which enables us to define "how central" the resources (museums, monuments, etc.) are and what the interactions between them are. Comprehending which factors influence visitors' urban mobility behavior is key to understanding tourists' consumption of space and their connections with the tourism assets of the city. Furthermore, when tourists visit a destination, they make a mental representation of the destination, constructing a mental map of it. Thus, tourists consume not only spaces but also the image of a city/destination. Moreover, the latter influences the former. The quality of surrounding architecture and urbanism plays a crucial role in enhancing the experiential value of a destination and influencing space consumption preferences. Clearly, visitors are more likely to use/consume environments that are easily navigated and mentally legible. In order to explore these patterns, a real experiment was performed based on visitor behavior in the city of Bilbao. In addition, the central places of Bilbao were determined and an analysis of the spatial interaction between cultural sites was performed, making use of a new methodology based on GPS technologies, network analysis, and surveys. This methodology is the main contribution of this work. The results suggest that (1) easy mobility (walkability, accessibility, different transport modes) of the visited space facilitates the tourist experience; (2) simple and eligible mental maps of the city that are easily perceived by visitors facilitate the rapid consumption of the tourist destination; and (3) the centrality of the tourism resources affects the mobility of visitors and the consumption of the destination. Thus, by understanding how tourist mobility works in a destination and analyzing tourism resources' centrality, policy makers may better tailor sustainable strategies for cultural tourism destinations.
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