Third International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies

Abstract

The term sustainability can be defined as a blend of the word “sustain” and the word “ability.” Plenty of the research and the strategies to measure it have focused on the first part, understanding sustainability as a sort of a maintained state that can be reduced to a single number or indicator. However, sustainability (and the necessary abilities to achieve it) evolves through time and space. Therefore, more dynamic system to measure it are needed, adding qualitative indicators to the traditional quantitative ones and considering the role of different stakeholders. In this study, we take the case of the island of Lanzarote to present the results of a methodological proposal for measuring tourism sustainability at local level, thus introducing the territorial variable, which has had little attention in this field. The proposed indicator system is structured in four quadrants: the quantitative part, including a set of international and comparable indicators extracted from recognized international methodologies like UNEP and UNWTO (2005) and the European Tourism Indicator System (European Union, 2016) and a set of local indicator selected from local strategic documents; and the qualitative part, including the perceptions of stakeholders using an Importance Performance Analysis of both, the 12 issues of a sustainable agenda as defined by UNWTO (2004) and local variables. The results provide a useful tool for the decision-making process allowing comparison on the views of the different stakeholders, making easier to adapt the future strategies to those.