Spatial Imbalance Between Tourist Supply and Demand: The Identification of Spatial Clusters in Extremadura, Spain

Abstract

The techniques provided by spatial analysis have become a great ally of tourist planning as they allow the carrying out of exhaustive territorial analyses. The greater availability of georeferenced databases together with the more and more extensive use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is materialising in the proliferation of studies analysing the distribution patterns of tourist territories. The present study uses these techniques to study the degree of equilibrium in the distribution of places and its level of occupation in a region where the use of expansionary policies of growth of the tourism sector has been able to cause a strong imbalance in said activity, i.e., the case of the region of Extremadura. To verify this, both global contrasts, global Moran’s I and G (d) of Getis and Ord, are used, as well as local contrasts, to map LISA (Local Indicators of Spatial Association). The results obtained confirm the existence of strong imbalances in the effectiveness of the places created while allowing the identification of different clusters of high and low values. These findings represent an important output for the strategic planning of the territory in order to develop a strategy that allows the sustainable tourism development of the territory.

Spatial Variation in Tourism and Investment Potential in the Context of Sustainable Development—A Case Study of Staszowski County

“…According to Rodriguez Rangel and Sanchez Rivero [29], spatial analyses have become a major ally in tourism planning, because they enable exhaustive analyses of the study area. Ruda [30] also emphasizes the advantages of spatial analyses for detecting certain tendencies between neighboring study sites, while also indicating that the results may be unsatisfactory.…”

“…An increasingly common method, including in the case of tourism, is Geographic Information Systems (GIS) [29]. One advantage of analyses carried out using GIS tools is that they provide more knowledge of the spatial character of the phenomenon under study.…”

“…GIS in tourism can help in creating lists of tourism resources, enhancement of environmental protection during planning of tourism, management and control of the development of tourism, monitoring of tourist activity, or simulation and modelling of spatial results [30]. In addition, spatial analyses can be used to define centrographic measures and autocorrelations between features [29,31]. Thus, they provide knowledge on locations that are more and less attractive in terms of tourism, which can be very useful in tourism planning [32,33].…”

Spatial Diversity of Tourism in the Countries of the European Union

“…Lascu et al [14] compared the level of tourism in the 17 major regions of Spain and identified the key natural, cultural, and dual attractions using a two-step cluster analysis to ascertain the relative importance of the three types of attractions. Rodriguez and Sanchez [41] claimed that the techniques provided by spatial analysis have become a great ally of tourist planning as they allow exhaustive territorial analyses to be carried out. The authors' present study uses these techniques to study the degree of equilibrium in the distribution of places and its level of occupation in a region.…”

Peer-to-Peer Accommodation in Rural Areas of Catalonia: Defining Typologies of Rural Municipalities

“…This would support or refute the results of the classical approach. As indicated by various authors [9,23,32,33], this type of technique of mathematical analysis could be very useful to determine whether there are well-defined groups of municipalities that have a similar accommodation supply, and to detect hot and cold spots at a regional scale.…”