Methodological System to Determine the Development Potential of Rural Tourism in Extremadura, Spain

Abstract

There are methodologies that seek to know the tourism potential of the territory. However, their use has been very scarce and consequently, tourism plans lack a real vision of the possibility of developing tourism. In the case of Extremadura, Spain, a specific methodology has been proposed that considers types and subtypes of variables, both in terms of heritage and tourism facilities. In addition, these variables are ranked in five classes, and their importance is weighted according to the opinion of the demand. The results offer a global vision of the potential, coinciding with the area determined by official organizations in the country, but also facilitate the specific study of specific tourism sub-types. They also show that there is not always a clear relationship between the attractiveness of the environment and tourist facilities. It is concluded that it is important to bet on these evaluation methodologies to enhance the knowledge of any territory to determine its capacity to develop tourism. On the other hand, it helps tourism plans to be applied in the territory to consider the potential of each municipality to promote tourism.

Modeling the Potential for Rural Tourism Development via GWR and MGWR in the Context of the Analysis of the Rural Lodging Supply in Extremadura, Spain

“…In addition, given the manner in which tourism is conceived, which is highly biased towards economic considerations, aspects representing important qualitative considerations, such as those related to the demand preferences, the opinions of tourists, etc., are not considered. In this context, Geographic Information Systems have been used to analyze distribution patterns and models [44,45].…”

“…The use of all of these sources made it possible to calculate and elaborate a database composed of 37 internal variables and 23 external variables for each of the 388 municipalities of Extremadura (Table 2). This database was used to carry out studies on the tourism potential of the territory, describing each of the variables used in detail [45].…”

“…The territory is dotted with a multitude of tourist resources with an important natural and cultural heritage, although it lacks the modality of sun and beach tourism [13,[46][47][48][49][50]. Proof of this can be found in the numerous protected areas distributed throughout the territory [51], the bathing areas linked to rivers, and the significant volume of historical sites, as well as the areas and nuclei that have been listed as World Heritage sites by UNESCO [45].…”

“…As a consequence of all of this, growth has been disorderly, and not always in line with the potential of an area to attract tourists. This article proposes, as a starting hypothesis, that the volume of lodging supply does not adapt to the existence of major tourist resources sought by tourists [45], which will be demonstrated with the use of regressions.…”

Evaluation and Spatiotemporal Differentiation of Cultural Tourism Development Potential: The Case of the Middle and Lower Reaches of the Yellow River

“…CTDP has increasingly become a field of concern for scholars. This paper will integrate the ideas of technical evaluation and comprehensive evaluation and construct the evaluation index system of CTDP, based on combing the existing literature on CTDP [13,[15][16][17][18][19][20] and combining the essential characteristics of cultural tourism. Using the relevant data of 43 cities in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River from 2009 to 2020 for weight determination, an evaluation model is established to classify potential levels and reveal spatiotemporal differences.…”