Abstract
The slow tourism movement is gaining popularity as more destinations focus on the local environment and heritage experience. The approach to slow tourism usually occurs either when traditional destinations exhaust their life cycle with an evident reduction in sustainability, or when newly emerging destinations decide to develop in this way. The case of Madeira is different; the island has several decades of tourism development without excessive pressure or overcrowding, and in planning for the future it wants to sustain these conditions. Seeking to understand Madeira’s perception of the development model, we surveyed entrepreneurs in Madeira’s lodging, restaurant and bar, shopping, transportation, intermediation, and tourist activity industries, as well as its public sector. Even without having encountered the popularized the ideas of slow tourism, Madeira’s tourism entrepreneurs show significant alignment with the values of quieter tourism. In contrast to its mature counterparts (i.e., Europe’s other popular sun and beach destinations), for Madeira it is not a question of destroying or rehabilitating, but rather of continuing sustainable development processes. Our results suggest that although slow tourism is typically a reaction to a very advanced phase of the life cycle, it can be the result of an endogenous impulse, as is true for Madeira.
Highlights
Since the inception of mass tourism in the 1960s, in the Mediterranean, the emphasis has been on sun and beach tourism in both island and mainland coastal areas
- Slow tourism is a movement that brings together a set of distinct characteristics with respect to the life cycle of mass tourism that began in the 1960s
- Slow tourism’s development in a given destination offers opportunities to improve its position as a tourist attraction and increase its economic income, especially when assuming that the tourist is willing to pay more for a superior experience
Summary
Since the inception of mass tourism in the 1960s, in the Mediterranean, the emphasis has been on sun and beach tourism in both island and mainland coastal areas. This model has stimulated mass tourism but has resulted in depredation of the territory, changes to the environment, the heritage, and the way of life of local residents. It has led to exploitation in the form of tourist monoculture, industrialization of services, mass production and cheap prices, as destinations have advanced through the tourism life cycle phases. Slow tourism has been offered as an alternative. It is another way of doing tourism with radically different guidelines: focus on local contact and nearby sights, consumption of local products and heritage, use of clean energy, ecological and ethical vision, and preserving the quality of life of residents and tourists alike. Slow tourism produces more leisurely trips in order to explore the destination more deeply, reduces the carbon footprint, and is committed to achieving a memorable travel experience [1,2,3]
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