Enhancing urban heritage can benefit the local community, but development has a negative impact on both the landscape and the social environment. The Viñales Valley (Cuba) is a priority hub of tourism development where ecotourism and cultural tourism have rapidly increased. The lack of hotel accommodation has contributed to the growth of room rental in private houses in Viñales, a protected world heritage landscape. The aim of this study is to determine the impact of home stay tourism on Viñales, both in physical terms (modifications to housing and the urban landscape) and in social terms (the changes and 'benefits and losses' perceived by the owners/hosts of the homes available for rent). The inventory we made detected 392 rental homes and we interviewed 74 landlords. The most clearly negative results are that renting out accommodation for tourists is the direct cause of the reduction in urban green spaces, the use of new building materials or the emergence of modern architectural structures. In social terms, the management of tourist activity is principally shouldered by women, leads to changes to daily habits and transforms the home into a work space. Finally, this activity causes social problems because of the emergence of social differences.
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.
Purpose This paper aims to analyse Barcelona City Council's tourism policy documents to detect how, through the influence of research, different pathways are produced to achieve social impact. Design/methodology/approach Using the case study approach, a qualitative content analysis is applied to review 31 tourism policy documents of Barcelona City Council. Findings The results show that the influence of tourism research on Barcelona City Council's policy documents occurs through the following pathways that drive potential social impact: the development of shared research programmes, joint projects, the creation of information exchange platforms, support for academia, the creation of debates, the founding of institutes, the referencing of scientific articles and studies commissioned directly by the City Council from higher education bodies for implementation in the city. Originality/value The originality of this paper is to highlight the social relevance of research and to contribute to raising awareness among researchers. The social impact of research is an under-explored topic in the field of tourism. Moreover, there is little research that conducts this analysis through policy documents.
La consideración del turismo como una vía y oportunidad para el desarrollo está cada vez más presente en las políticas socioeconómicas de los países. Algunos hechos que han contribuido a este aumento de protagonismo del turismo son entre otros el consenso alcanzado en reuniones internacionales sobre la capacidad de esta actividad para contribuir al desarrollo y más concretamente al alivio de la pobreza, como se recoge en los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio fijados por las Naciones Unidas. El sector del turismo es una línea estratégica que tiene grandes posibilidades para convertirse en líder de la cooperación turística internacional, pues es considerado una herramienta que, bien gestionada, contribuye a la mejora de la calidad de vida de las poblaciones locales y a la reducción de la pobreza, fomentando la creación de lugares de trabajo y la conservación del patrimonio natural y cultural. Teóricamente es así, pero en la práctica: żQué está sucediendo? El turismo es un fenómeno dinámico tanto en su crecimiento como en la permanente transformación de sus elementos, de las relaciones entre los mismos o de nuevas expresiones y formas de hacer turismo. Su estudio y seguimiento exige un análisis de las problemáticas aún pendientes, así como requiere responder a las nuevas realidades, ara que el turismo mantenga su fin último, el desarrollo. El II Congreso de la Red Internacional de Investigadores en Turismo, Cooperación y Desarrollo quiere con este encuentro: - Crear un foro de discusión y reflexión, desde una perspectiva académica y de investigación, sobre temas pendientes aún por resolver como el impacto del turismo en las comunidades locales y de abordar nuevas realidades y estrategias de desarrollo turístico y cooperación que reclaman nuestra atención. - Sumar conocimientos en el campo de la investigación del turismo como herramienta de cooperación al desarrollo. - Facilitar un espacio para conocernos e impulsar futuras colaboraciones de nvestigación.
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