The Deficient Concept Of The Tourist In Spanish Regional Legislation On Tourism Management

Abstract

In Spain, the Autonomous Regions have exclusive responsibility for tourism matters and, given this fact, they have adopted general management and regulation laws to govern the sector. These laws have different names but all include the term “tourism” in their titles. Therefore, the concepts of “tourism” and “tourist” are essential for understanding the scope of their application. However, if one studies the content of these laws, they will see that very few of them actually define “tourism” and, more importantly, that the definitions of “tourist” do not correspond to the traditional and historical meaning of this term. The conclusion the author has come to is that said laws regulate tourism only from a partial, limited perspective as a simple lending/receiving of services, especially of private natural areas, and that they make very few references to quality, sustainability and competitiveness as guidelines that are required to spell out a modern concept of tourism.