Social Legitimation as Explanatory Factor for the Process of Residential Tourism

Abstract

Tourism has decisively contributed to the modernisation of Spanish society. In the Mediterranean region, the tourist activity has become intermingled with urban growth and the emergence of new transnational lifestyles. The criticisms expressed by the experts who have studied its effects (environmental, cultural...) contrast with the intensification of these dynamics over the last decades. Our goal is to delve into the reasons that explain the process of legitimation. The results are grounded in the information gathered in 37 in-depth interviews and 6 focus groups that collected the views of politicians, business people, experts, and Spanish citizens living in a sample of Mediterranean towns, where the impacts of residential tourism have been more intense. The interviewees only acknowledge those problems related to the tourist activity, but consider them to be a low or acceptable price to be paid. As documented here, the interviewees do not believe that the negative side effects of this process can obscure the positive general image. The main social actors involved in residential tourism define this process in tourism terms, then the perpetuation of the process is legitimised by appealing to the foreseeable consequences of an eminently tourism process, rather than to a process that, at least to a great extent, shows a real estate and migration nature.