Model for measuring carrying capacity in inhabited tourism destinations

Abstract

Sustainable development of tourist destinations, of any scale, such as countries, regions or municipalities, is hampered by the challenges that sustainability measurement faces. Although progress is being made in the measurement of tourism standards, such as IRTS 2008, by the UN and UNWTO, measurement of tourism at the subnational level still lacks international standards. In addition, measuring tourism sustainability means even more difficulties for tourism destinations, since standards have not yet been internationally agreed and resources and skills to develop them are scarce. To avoid or mitigate the excess of tourists, destinations that seek sustainable tourism development often include measures of tourism carrying capacity as part of their management processes. The methodology for measuring tourism carrying capacity of tourism resources, when seeking to obtain a maximum number of visitors that a destination can accept, is abundant. This is the case of those resources with clear entry and exit points. However, when an inhabited tourism destination wishes to avoid or mitigate the problems of tourism carrying capacity excess for the entire destination and not just of a tourism resource, from a management perspective and without pointing to a single figure, the literature on methodologies in this regard is scarce. This gap is addressed in this paper, as it proposes a methodology to measure tourism carrying capacity in inhabited tourism destinations through alerts that could help destination managers to act.