El discurso de rechazo al turismo en Canarias: una aproximación cualitativa

Abstract

Tourism is a very important activity in the Canary Islands, both economically and socially. It benefits local population through economic growth and employment creation. But after several decades of tourism development in the islands, academic knowledge about the behaviour of the sector and the impacts it creates is still scarce, considering its importance. One of the less known issues about tourism in the Canary Islands is the resident’s perception towards tourism. And it is this issue this paper deals with. It will be focused on the social discourses rejecting tourism in the Islands, even though it will also consider social discourses that have supported and still support tourism development. The paper adopts a qualitative strategy. The objective is not to analyze how many people in the Canary Islands reject or accept tourism, but rather to understand the meaning of their discourses about it. There are three impor-tant ideas in the reject discourse: tourism generate high concentration of population in the islands, the benefits of the activity go out and the tourists and the touristic model symbolize a low prestige consump-tion leisure product. Because today the sun and sea model symbolize low prestige

Keywords

• Tourism
• Perceptions
• Host population
• Qualitative methodology
• Social class