Abstract
In tourism planning and marketing, it is necessary to consider the community and its cultural characteristics as a transversal axis. Therefore, local perception must visualize the costs and benefits of development without compromising the intrinsic values of the destinations. All types of planning must have a clear vision of the local identity and how included or empowered the community feels in the decision-making process. This study seeks to quantitatively identify the levels of empowerment of the Manta community with respect to local tourism development and the relationship between the perception of empowerment and the demographic variables of the citizens. Additionally, a qualitative component is carried out to determine the identity characteristics of the mantenses. Therefore, a mixed-method approach is adopted in which a qualitative component of the study is used and subsequently validated by triangulation by a quantitative component. For the correlational statistical analysis, multiple regression was carried out. The results obtained from this study identified aspects that can be implemented at the government planning level to increase the levels of tourist empowerment of Mantenses and training plans to avoid the identity dispersion determined in the qualitative component. The strategies proposed in this research were included in both the Manta Tourism Development Plan and the Marketing Plan.
Presenters
Xavier Alberto Basurto CedenoProfessor, Administrative Sciences, Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabi, Manabí, Ecuador Estefania Basurto
Destination Management Working Group Lead, Richardson Family SmartState Center of Economic Excellence in Tourism, University of South Carolina, South Carolina, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Empowerment, Identity, Manta, Marketing, Tourism
