Agenda XXI LLORET DE MAR (GB) - Ajuntament de Lloret de Mar

c. Tourist's "pocket money" goes farther in underdeveloped countries, and the demand side has
taken to the idea that their holidays are composed not only by travel and accommodations, but
also by the consumption possibilities of their pocket money.
One competitive requirement inexorably linked to the tourist offerings of developed countries
should be a unique, non-standardisable value-added plus perhaps involving product
sophistication elements. However, it surely involves introducing the territory's genuine (physical
and anthropological) attributes in order to maintain or recover the tourist/territory dialectic
found in the genesis itself of tourism.
2. The environmental quality factor will have increasingly more weight in the competitiveness of
tourist resources. The general awareness of environmental issues has advanced extraordinarily
in recent years, to the extent that concern for the respect of the environment has reached major
proportions in the tourism market. For some years now, tour operators have been detecting and
addressing the increasing requirements in this area on the demand side, and they are
incorporating them in their parameters for evaluating tourist companies and areas (as we can
see in the attached table published by the DRV, Germany's Association of Travel Agents) and,
at the same time, they are making growing commitments with consumer organisations and users
in this direction.
Tourist destinations that do not take into account and do not act
consistently in relation to these two variables will inexorably tend to be
left out or, more precisely, to operate with marginal segments of the
tourism market. It is thus not only for ethical reasons but also for strictly
economic reasons that the territory must be managed applying
sustainability criteria.
Recommendations by the Germany's Association of Travel Agents (DRV) about the importance of the
environment in tourist destinations (abstract).
There are 3 aspects or theses of note:
1. The environment as an essential factor of quality and motivation in choosing a tourist destination.
2. The problems present today in the Mediterranean already affect the appeal of this area to tourists. The
distortion of the original scenery, air, water and noise pollution, and the degradation of cities and towns are
serious problems. According to the EMNID Market Research Institute, the environment is a concern and an urgent
problem for 72% of the EU's 350 million citizens.
3. Tourists contented with a more or less structured package are a figure of the past. Today's tourists are more
selective, seeking products with more cultural components, better quality, a natural milieu that has not been
deteriorated, exotic experiences, genuine landscapes and life forms, leisure and health.
This could be a summary of the entire document. To illustrate it, we have taken a number of representative
excerpts:
"Tour operators already use ecological criteria when selecting accommodations and specific areas within the
various tourist destinations. Nature, the environment, culture and health will become fundamental reasons for the
choice of a tourist destination."
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