Tourism, Urbanization, and the Evolving Periphery of the European Union by Max Holleran

Author:Max Holleran
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9789811502187
Publisher: Springer Singapore

3.5 The Tourism Ladder

Indeed, the reputational decline of Benidorm demonstrates the vicissitudes of coastal tourism (some locations are eventually victims of their own popularity through global trends and, more importantly, by environmental degradation) but it also shows the maturation of Valencia and Spain’s overall coastal tourism market into a more variegated sector. Spain’s tourism industry grew to the third largest in the world in the 1980s (after France and the US), thanks mostly to a surge in ‘fly and flop’ tourism that marketed low-cost beach vacations to Northern Europeans (Boissevain 1996). While this type of tourism was increasingly regarded as a working-class holiday, in contrast to more individuated middle-class and upper-class vacations, it was profitable and did not lead to major social conflict between visitors and locals. Many people in the region benefited, even those who simply sold agricultural lands. Juan Fernando and his son, Miguel, natives of a small town near Alicante, explained the cultural change succinctly: “[T]here was one major occupation in this region before tourism, and that was farming, that’s what I did and what every man in my family did … since forever.” He explained how he and Miguel eventually decided to sell their land to real estate developers from Valencia in the early 1990s. They discussed the change as a family and Miguel, who was the youngest son, agreed to go to school for tourism management—something his family could better support with the sale of their land. Juan Fernando smiled at me and pointed to Miguel: “[A]nd you can ask him if that was the right choice or if he would rather be a farmer today … go ahead ask him … you can ask him in English, French, or German.”

By the early 1990s, the tourism market in Spain had become a major part of the national economy and had followed two distinct trajectories from its origins in budget package tourism: cultural tourism, aimed at wealthier and older travelers, was pursued by municipalities seeking more revenue from fewer visitors, and residential tourism—second homes and retirement—was invested in by more rural municipalities where Northern Europeans went in search of cheap property deals and abundant sunshine. These two new ‘rungs’ on the tourism ladder were aggressively experimented with by the regional governments of Catalonia, Valencia, Andalusia, and the Basque Country, with special marketing campaigns, tax breaks, and infrastructure funds. When Spain’s economy became synonymous with tourism, politicians and entrepreneurs hoped to demonstrate that this industry was robust and could innovate and create new markets. One of the key goals of the Valencia Region was to harness the income from beach tourism and direct some of the cash flow toward more sustainable tourism such as heritage, culinary, or arts tourism (Degen and García 2012). This had long been the ideal progression of tourism-oriented regional economies, but often the model did not function in practice because developers focused on the bottom line and increased capacity, while natural resources were degraded by improper infrastructure and pollution. Spanish tourism, in its

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