Abstract
Intensive tourism in historic city centers is causing socio-spatial effects that are already visible to society. This has led politicians and academics to focus on the issue, creating a debate about gentrification in certain central urban areas which overlaps with studies on touristification, understood by some authors as tourism gentrification. This article aims to identify whether socio-demographic changes identifiable as touristification have occurred in the historic centers of two Andalusian cities, Seville and Cádiz, and which we interpret as the replacement of residents with visitors. The work is based primarily on the exploratory analysis of socio-demographic data from the Population Register and data on housing and rentals provided by different sources. The work shows strong indications of a relationship between the increase of tourist apartments and losses of residents in both historic centers. The paper concludes by pointing to the need for further research on this relationship in public statistics that can guide future policy action.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been increasing concern about the impact of intensive tourism, both politically and academically
Starting with the analysis that shows the use of the housing stock in the historic centers of Seville and Cádiz, the existing concentration of tourist rentals and the difference in the income generated by tourist rentals are compared to conventional rentals
It has been possible to demonstrate that since 2013 there has been a loss of population in the historic centers of both cities that coincides with a clear irruption of digital tourist rental platforms, as already proposed by other authors such as Postma and Schmuecker, [5] and Veiga et al [4], giving strength to the hypothesis that the high number of tourist homes and the difference in rent may be a reason for the process of touristification, as already indicated by Wachsmuth and Weisler [20]
Summary
There has been increasing concern about the impact of intensive tourism, both politically and academically. This has been especially noticeable in southern European cities such as Athens, Barcelona, Lisbon, and Rome, among others. Ref [1] Spain’s status as a tourist power has increased the prominence of this type of process. Ref [2] This type of impact has attracted the attention of the World Tourism Organization and the European Parliament. Concern about the impact of tourism is not new, the recent focus is in response to an intensification of tourist flows and the expansion of tourism processes into new areas. In recent years, the role of certain innovations in the tourism sector has developed or strengthened with a significant impact, such as low-cost airlines, cruise tourism, and the more recent emergence of online platforms that offer tourist accommodation [4,5]
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