Dealing with paradox -historical tourism in a non- touristic city: the case of Santiponce vs. Italica (Spain)

Abstract

In this ongoing research, we focus our attention in the origin and state of art in the analysis of local tourist sector potentialities4 in the municipality of Santiponce (Sevilla). This research is a consequence of the obtained results in this village in a previous investigation about the relationship between tourist development and community satisfaction in order to design methodological frameworks able to develop research which results will allow to plan patrimony tourist strategies. These strategies have to consider the relationships between resident’s perceptions of the tourist impact and their satisfaction These aspects directly influence in the tourist policies intended to design and execute. In general, Santiponce’s resident live apart from tourism. As it happens in Europe, is normal to find small cities and villages, more or less close to big cities that form standardised tourist circuits, with one or several tourist resources of great interest, but, paradoxically, never have developed a relevant tourist activity and where tourism is a marginal proportion of its common economic activity. Our research tries to analyse the paradox of this type of municipalities that, even having relevant patrimonial resources, do not develop an important tourist activity and, even, where tourism is not perceived as a development and welfare opportunity for the actual residents and, which is more important, for the future ones. This paradox exits in Santiponce, where we are developing an analysis model based on four sources of information: residents, experts’ opinions, businessmen and tourists.