Abstract
Historic centers have become first-line tourist destinations. In order to achieve sustainable development, it is essential to get to know the opinions of the host community on the impact of tourism, the positives, as well as the negatives. This paper aims to understand the residents’ opinions and perceptions of destinations as the historic cities. This research looks into the residents’ opinions on the impact of tourism in the historic city of Toledo, Spain. The results of a quantitative survey among 442 residents in the city of Toledo are presented. The study is a revision of the literature and analysis and explanation of an empiric study’s results. Descriptive statistics have been used, as well as factor analysis and non-parametric tests to analyze data. The main results point out that residents have a positive vision of tourism development, rather than negative. The economic importance of tourism and its ability to create jobs stand out. However, they also think that the historic center is being turned into a museum for tourists. Analyzing their opinions according to certain demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, some major differences come up, such as that the inhabitants of residential areas have a more positive opinion than those who live in the historic center. Understanding the perspective of the residents can help the managers and planners of the tourism in the city to play down the potential negative impact of tourism and to achieve support from the host community in regards to tourism.
Highlights
“They knew everything there was for the tourists, the despised tourists who kept Nova Scotia alive.” [1]
The results are presented by analyzing the opinions of the positive dimensions and the negative aspects of tourism in the touristic-historic city of Toledo, first in a general manner and taking into account the demographic and socioeconomic independent variables
In the first place, the answers to the question items about positive opinions of the tourism in Toledo, it was observed that there was an agreement about the economic impacts of tourism
Summary
“They knew everything there was for the tourists, the despised tourists who kept Nova Scotia alive.” [1]. Nowadays, there is an irreversible process of touristification that affects a number of destinations in regards to cultural, economic, political, and social aspects [3]. In these places, the risk of altering the balance of the territorial system in favor of the touristic function is real. The touristic-historic cities are first line touristic destinations [6] Their cultural heritage and their particular characteristics make them especially sensitive to the negative impact of tourism. In these cities, the host community has to coexist with a growing number of tourists who fill their spaces. Clear comprehension of the phenomenon in order to understand how the host community perceives the positive and negative impacts of tourism [10]
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