Sofia GALEAS ORTIZ, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
The Smart Tourist Destination guarantees the capacity of destinations to maintain and improve their competitiveness, generating added value between supply and demand. Also between residents and visitors. In this sense, co-governance among stakeholders (Hall, 2011) is key to its success, as it is pointed out by the New Urban Agenda. The objective of this research is this aspect, the analysis of exisitng cogovernance in tourist areas, focusing, at this moment, on the emergence of apartments that have changed their residential uses for tourism, and the projection of this expanded touristification process in the whole city and in its adjacent límits, that is, the metropolitanization of tourism (Crespi-Vallbona, 2021) and the phenomenon dubbed “airbnbification” by Richards (2016). Tourist destination governance is therefore being forced to address these many challenges, and our main research question focuses on the decisive factors that contribute to the sustainable coexistence of rewarding tourist experiences (Füller & Michel, 2014)and everyday life for residents (López-Villanueva and Crespi-Vallbona, 2021); in other words, how can tourist cities offer fashionable attractions and experiences without making life inconvenient for residents?
In Barcelona, since the city hosted the Olympic Games in 1992, the flow of international tourists has not slowed down and, as a result, the number of accommodation places has grown steadily. Even the owners of residential properties have started offering their homes to visitors, a phenomenon that has led to a dramatic rise in the number of beds available for tourists in the city. Thus, the aim of this research is to analyze the way in which this accommodation category has grown with a view to reflecting on the most appropriate form of governance and action to be taken by the local authorities in the extended territory, that is the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB).
Mots clés : smart tourism destination|tourist houses|governance|touristification|metropolitanization
A104596MC