Measurement of the distribution of tourist activity and assessment of the carrying capacity in the Basque Country

Client: Directorate of Tourism of the Basque Government

Country and date of execution: Spain, June 2016 – December 2016

Category: Measurement

Description of the Project

This study is in line with the principles required by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council in its Sustainable Destination Biosphere certification, which requires the study of the carrying capacity and distribution of tourism activity in the territory. The principal objective of this project was to analyse the carrying capacity from the management point of view in six municipalities in the Basque Country, and to measure the distribution of tourist activity. For this work, the Basque Government’s Department of Tourism worked with the University of Deusto and Dr. Nagore Espinosa Uresandi. Dr. Espinosa, in addition to collaborating in the development of the load capacity analysis, developed the analysis of tourist mobility behavior using the in2GISflow® solution, which is what is reflected in the image. This allows us to know which territory is visited by tourists, for how long, which profiles are the ones that explore the least, how much they spend, etc., that is to say, the profile variables are crossed with the mobility variables.