THE COASTAL TOURISM IN THE NORTH-WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN: A QUALITATIVE APPROACH TO A MODEL IN TRANSFORMATION PROCESS

Abstract

In this work we characterise the Northwest Mediterranean (Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencian Community) coastal tourism’s current moment and their future perspectives. It’s a zone that has reached the maturity and even it has confronted with a hypothetical decline in a successful way. For this purpose, we use 33 semi-structured interviews to key agents of the territory (tourist company representatives, administration representatives and academicians). From their discourse we obtain a group diagnostic and we identify the developing politics (both company and institutional) to give continuity to the good moment of the Spanish Mediterranean littoral’s tourism and, in a longer term, to prevent the destination’s decadence. It seems to be a consensus in the need to surpass definitively the previous model tied to the real-estate business, and to bet on a sustainable tourism from the environmental point of view, but also from the sociocultural and economic. Through the complementary offer and the experience’s singularization, it’s a sort of tourism that adds value and contribute to the product’s positioning in a highly competitive global context.