Sustainable use of endogenous touristic resources of rural areas: two portuguese case studies

              Vol. 5 Nº2 págs. 193-207. 2007
www.pasosonline.org
© PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural. ISSN 1695-7121
Sustainable use of endogenous touristic resources of rural areas:
two portuguese case studies
Laurentina Cruz Vareiro †
J. Cadima Ribeiro ‡
Universidade do Minho (Portugal)
Resumen: La evidencia empírica muestra que el turismo puede mostrarse como una contribución real al
desarrollo regional y, en el caso de territorios remotos y económicamente deprimidos, es uno de los
mejores sectores para conseguir estas metas. Este papel del turismo es posible sacando beneficio de la
dotación de recursos endógenos de esos territorios. Mientras tanto, las oportunidades no son las mismas
para cada región y es fácil de comprender que, considerando la disponibilidad de recursos, no todos
podrán optar por el sector del turismo como estrategia de desarrollo. De otro lado, el desarrollo sosteni-ble
depende tanto de la conservación como de la valorización de los recursos potenciales y de la diversi-ficación
de las actividades y productos turísticos, además de las opciones de los agentes y gestores. Par-tiendo
de la investigación empírica llevada a cabo en las municipalidades portuguesas de Caminha y
Paredes de Coura, y en las que se encuentra interesada la Tourism in Rural Areas (TRA), nosotros pre-sentamos
en este artículo una evaluación preliminar de los impactos sociales y económicos de las estra-tegias
turísticas seguidas. También apuntamos algunas implicaciones que persiguen mejorar futuros
diseños para la dotación de recursos en estos territorios. Partimos de que el turismo se basa en la calidad,
lo cual sirve a los intereses de las poblaciones locales.
Palabras clave: Recursos endógenos; Desarrollo sostenible; Turismo en áreas rurales.
Abstract: Empirical evidence shows that tourism can give a real contribution to regional development
and, in the case of certain remote and economic lagged territories, it is one of the best sectors to achieve
this goal. This role of tourism as to do, namely, with the possibility of taking profit from the endogenous
resources endowment of these territories. Meanwhile, the opportunities are not the same for each region
and it is easy to understand that, considering the resources available, not every one has the choice to base
its development strategy in the tourism sector. On the other hand, sustainable development depends,
both, on conservation and valorisation of the resources potential and on diversification of tourism activi-ties
and products, no matter the agents or policy options are. Based on empirical research carried out in
Caminha and Paredes de Coura portuguese municipalities, and in what Tourism in Rural Areas (TRA) is
concerned, we present in this paper a preliminary evaluation of the social and economic impacts of the
tourism strategies followed. We also aim to extract some policy implications in order to better design
future approaches to this issue of taking profit from resources endowment of territories. The starting
point is the one of tourism based on quality, which serves the interests of local populations.
Keywords: Endogenous resources; Sustainable development; Tourism in rural areas.
† • Laurentina Cruz Vareiro. IPCA - Escola Superior de Gestão. Arcozelo – Portugal. E-mail: lvareiro@ipca.pt
‡ • J. Cadima Ribeiro. EEG e NIPE. Universidade do Minho. Campus de Gualtar. Braga – Portugal.
E-mail: jcadima@eeg.uminho.pt
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Introduction
It is usually admitted that tourism plays
an important role in economic development,
providing long-term benefits to local
economies, mostly when implemented on a
sustained way. The capacity of tourism to
establish synergies with several other ac-tivities,
like lodging, feeding, drinking,
transport and entertainment services for
tourists, makes tourism a structuring sec-tor
of many economies.
In many developed countries and in de-veloping
ones tourism is today a strategic
sector. This is the Portuguese case where
tourism is presented as a strategic cluster
by the Economic and Social Development
Plan for 2000/2006. In this document tour-ism
is officially claimed to be one pivotal
activity to achieve the economic and social
development of the nation and of its re-gions,
particularly for the remote and
lagged ones.
Assuming the analysis of the available
touristic resources crucial to define the
tourist vocation of a territory, and, above
all, to select the best touristic alternative
within the range of available possibilities
(Cerro, 1993), this investigation aims to
present a preliminary evaluation of the
social and economic impacts of tourism in
certain rural areas. In this case, the mu-nicipalities
chosen were Caminha and
Paredes de Coura, two Portuguese munici-palities
located in the Spanish (Galiza)
border. Meanwhile, we believe Tourism in
Rural Areas (TRA) will be only an instru-ment
of development if the established
strategy succeeds to incorporate the local
values and culture.
Taking these two cases, we also aim to
extract some policy indications, in order to
better design future approaches to this
issue of taking profit from resources en-dowment
of territories.
From this perspective, following Boullon
(2000), it is useful to remind that tourism,
like any other economic industry, tends to
locate in the most favourable area of the
physical space, that is, in those places en-dowed
with the adequate attributes accord-ing
to the nature of the activity. Therefore,
tourist attractions are inputs into the tour-ism
sector and they constitute the main
reason behind tourists travelling to those
territories. As a matter of fact, visitors
travel to those regions either to know their
touristic attributes either to enjoy activities
programmed to satisfy tourists’ expecta-tions.
Tourism in Rural Areas
Tourism as an endogenous resources
strategy
In recent times, tourism has been advo-cated
as an efficient way to promote the
development of the so-called less favoured
or lagged regions. However, in spite of the
remarkable perspectives tourism sector can
open to economies in the medium and long
term, it is essential tourism will be taken
from as a sustainable economic and envi-ronmental
growth approach. In this sense,
it will be crucial regions put their emphasis
not only on diversification of tourism activi-ties
and products, but also on strategic
partnerships, as well as on conservation
and valorisation of the cultural and natural
heritage. Indeed, tourism needs to diversify
and to decentralise itself, taking advantage
of the potential of regions and their ability
to generate alternative tourism products
(Ribeiro et al., 2001).
For the success of the tourism activities
in certain territories, it becomes important
to rely on the local resources. This thought
comes from the endogenous development
paradigm, developed since late
1970’s/beginning of the 1980’s in opposition
to the traditional regional models and poli-cies.
As it is common known, the traditional
regional policy follows an approach “from
above”, a growing model relying on spatial
concentration and spatial economic redis-tribution
of economic activities in order to
attain the reduction of regional income
disparities, using, for such, external re-sources.
As a consequence of its scarce per-formance,
this model has fallen into disuse.
As Barquero (1995) refers, the “new” ap-proach
“from bellow”, more concerned with
the economic development of cities and
territories and with reducing regional de-velopment
disparities, makes use of not
only external resources but, above all, en-dogenous
resources. This new strategy sus-
Laurentina Cruz Vareiro and J. Cadima Ribeiro 195
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tains the idea that economic development
doesn't have to be necessarily polarised and
concentrated in large cities; it can be dif-fuse
if regions have capability to use suc-cessfully
the endogenous resources and the
potential of territories.
The expression "endogenous develop-ment",
itself, (or "development from below",
as some prefer to call it) reflects, as under-lined
by Polèse (1998), the idea that success
of a region depend, lastly, on its own capac-ity
to initiate and lead an economic growing
process that will allow it to become pros-perous,
based on the initiative and techni-cal
know-how of its inhabitants and com-panies.
This way, the sources of develop-ment
lie in the region itself, in its people,
its institutions, its sense of community and,
perhaps first of all, in the innovation and
entrepreneurship capacity of its population
(Polèse, 1998a).
The involvement of local people and en-terprises
in development planning allows
the use of the available resources, whilst
designing competitive solutions for resolv-ing
their growth problems and constraints.
This development doesn't mean the imple-mentation
of great industrial projects and,
according to Henriques and Neves (1986),
should be decided at the smallest territorial
scale and starting from the territorial iden-tity
of populations. It implies a decentral-ized
public administration, guided by in-termediate
organisms which will support in
material or financial terms the companies.
As a result, it is expected that local devel-opment
might generate a reduction of the
dependence of the region from national
governments and external economic agents
(Polèse, 1998).
It is worth mentioning that the empha-sis
given to local environments has the
merit of putting the emphasis on resources
and capabilities of regions, but, as Polèse
(1998) says, it can also be the largest
weakness of the model, once the resources
of territories (“milieux ") are not the same
everywhere.
This is the case of the tourism activity.
In fact, the opportunities are not similar for
each region and, considering the resources
available, not every one has the choice to
base its development strategy in the tour-ism
sector. For some regions tourism as-sumes
a vital role, for others it is a devel-opment
factor and for others it constitutes
a small co-adjuvant factor with more or less
expression according to the existing condi-tions
(Cunha, 1997).
Indeed, it is now widely accepted that
the conditions are changing. A society in
constant mutation, ecological more and
more conscious, searching for a new quality
of life and alerted for the negative effects of
mass tourism, has provided the bases for
the diversification of tourism activities and
products. As a direct result, the tourism
sector is quickly developing new products
and market segments, opening a wide field
of opportunities. One of these products,
which has faced recently an increasing de-mand,
is tourism in rural areas (TRA).
The development of this market cannot
be considered accidental or temporary; it is
the result of the evolution of the societal
model. The saturation of some coastal tour-istic
areas and the evolution of tourist mo-tivations
transformed the rural space in an
important tourist destination, particularly
when it gathers attributes of singularity
and authenticity in what concerns to na-ture/
ecology, heritage and culture.
As a consequence, attributes as the en-vironmental
quality, the peacefulness, the
contact with nature and a non massified
space, as well as the preference for shorter
periods of vacations, are issues that have
increased the tourist's interest for rural
spaces. On the other hand, financial bene-fits
made available by the European Union
and other public sources allowed a wide
and heterogeneous supply that, somehow,
reflects the rising importance of this modal-ity
of tourism.
Tourism as a sustainable activity
Regarding rural development, tourism
in rural areas has assumed the role of the
better placed activity to achieve the socio-economic
revitalisation of lagged regions.
This role will be as successful as tourism
might incorporate resources, history, tradi-tions
and culture of each region.
Rural tourism is a growing sector and a
powerful instrument towards the diversifi-cation
of rural economies affected by the
decline of agriculture, as well as a factor
favouring pluri-activity taking the syner-gies
it is able to generate with a wide range
of other activities. This type of tourism,
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although being a minor part of the total
tourist market, is able to offer a valuable
contribution to the sustainability of rural
economies. This can be observed not only in
terms of income and employment generated
but also in terms of natural resource con-servation
or preservation, as well as in
what refers to the rehabilitation of the ar-tistic
and cultural heritage of rural spaces
it is able to produce –just mentioning the
more evident positive impacts (Vera, 1997).
Although the development of the rural
tourism has numerous advantages, it can
also cause several problems. In order to
minimize these problems, it is necessary to
define alternative tourist development
strategies which attain a responsible use of
rural territories, searching to rend com-patible
the interests of tourism, environ-ment
and local community ones (Vera,
1997; Bote Gómez, 2001).
In this sense, the definition of the model
or strategy of tourism development in rural
areas should choose to elect the following
targets, which are quite different from the
ones envisaged by the traditional tourism
industry (Bote Gómez, 2001):
- to match conservation and develop-ment
of touristic resources. Indeed, having
rural landscapes usually an important
natural and socio-cultural heritage, the
tourism development should respect the
integrity of its resources (attractive land-scape,
peacefulness and resting ambience,
popular architecture, etc.). As a conse-quence,
it is necessary to avoid, on one
hand, the `fundamentalist or static protec-tionism`
and, on the other hand, the ' pro-ductiviste
development ', as both cause
resources degradation or destruction and
the misuse of rural space;
- taking the concentration and large
scale of the supply which characterizes the
mass tourism strategy, it is suggested to
adopt instead a non concentrated and small
scale supply (of lodging and recreation).
This supply must be coordinate at the local
and the commercial levels (due to promo-tional,
commercial and management rea-sons);
- besides the financial returns necessary
to obtain the viability of investments made,
this strategy favours the contact with na-ture
and an authentic dialogue between the
rural and urban population through a set of
socio-cultural activities;
- this type of tourism has to be organized
and managed for the rural population in
order to optimize the direct and indirect
benefits of tourism in those areas. There-fore,
rural tourism should not be managed
by a reduced number of managers and in-termediary
agents who don't belong to the
rural community. On the contrary, the ru-ral
society must give their consent to the
strategy and be directly committed. Only
this way is possible to get the partnership
between the community members neces-sary
to develop the complex tasks involved
in and the preservation of touristic re-sources.
Given this, any rural tourism develop-ment
should elect, as Vera (1997) suggests,
the following targets: sustainable use of
resources; revitalization of local economies;
quality of management; integration of local
population; organized and controlled devel-opment,
which implies to reject mass tour-ism;
and, definitively, sustainability.
The TRA in Portugal
Before moving forward, it is important
to present some statistical data on last
years evolution of tourism in rural areas in
Portugal.
In what respects the tourism in rural areas,
the beginning of the 21st century is charac-terised
by the growth of the number of TRA
establishments1 and the number of beds
offered, in all types of facilities. This has
been happening since the first year that we
retained (Table 1).
As illustrated by Table 1, after a first
stage, most of the establishments that en-tered
in operation belonged to the Turismo
Rural (TR), Agro-Turismo (AG) and Casas
de Campo (CC) types of accommodation.
Such evolution contributed to the reduction
of the proportion of the Turismo de Habita-ção
(TH) type (starting point of the TRA in
Portugal) in the total number of establish-ments.
In 2002, from a total of 866 TRA estab-lishments
functioning throughout Portugal,
244 were devoted to TH, 358 to TR, 145 to
AG, 116 to CC and 3 integrated TA.
The north part of the country, just as in
previous years, continued to be the region
with larger lodging supply (3568 beds, in-
Laurentina Cruz Vareiro and J. Cadima Ribeiro 197
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tegrated at 1813 rooms, distributed by 372
TRA establishments). The Centre region
occupied the second place, with 1672 beds,
in 171 TRA establishments. The Autono-mous
Regions of Azores and Madeira were,
however, the ones that presented last years
higher growth rates.
Graph 1
Number of TRA establisments, by type (1999/2002)
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
Turismo de
Habitação
Turismo Rural Agroturismo Casas de
Campo
Turismo de
Aldeia
2002
1999
2002 2001 2000 1999 Average Var % 2002 2001 2000 1999 Average Var
%
North region 372 283 274 262 13,1% 3568 2597 2528 2394 15,2%
Centre region 171 132 130 118 13,8% 1672 1230 1199 1102 15,8%
Lisbonne and V. Tejo 99 95 96 98 0,4% 1064 981 985 1003 2,1%
Alentejo region 111 90 84 84 10,2% 1239 904 831 844 14,8%
Algarve region 24 19 19 18 10,6% 247 207 207 197 8,1%
Continente 777 619 603 580 10,7% 7790 5919 5750 5540 12,8%
A. R. Madeira 41 31 30 15 45,2% 361 264 250 116 52,6%
A.R Azores 48 35 35 11 85,1% 382 293 293 120 58,2%
Total 866 685 668 606 13,1% 8533 6476 6293 5776 14,5%
Number of bed places
NUTS II
Number of establishments
Table 2. Number of TRA establishments and accommodation capacity, by NUT II. Source: DGT
2002 2001 2000 1999 Average Var. % 2002 2001 2000 1999 Average Var. %
Turismo de Habitação 244 228 229 214 4,5% 2677 2371 2375 2183 7,2%
Turismo Rural 358 284 280 262 11,5% 3256 2379 2347 2208 14,8%
Agroturismo 145 122 119 115 8,3% 1738 1386 1350 1295 10,8%
Casas de Campo 116 51 40 15 107,2% 763 340 221 90 107,9%
Turismo de Aldeia 3 (a) - - - 99 (a) - - -
Total 866 685 668 606 13,1% 8533 6476 6293 5776 14,5%
Table 1. Total number of TRA establishments and accommodation capacity, by types. (a) – Type not considered in
2001. Source: DGT
Types of facilities
Number of establishments Number of bed places
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In what concerns the TRA demand,
according the visitor’s nationality, if we
take the 2002 we conclude that 52,4%
were foreign and 47,6% Portuguese. Ger-many
occupied the first place, followed by
United Kingdom and Holland. However,
just this last country increased its weight,
comparing with the previous year.
To better understand the dimension of
TRA in Portugal, it is important to keep
in mind the following aspects: although
the TRA establishments represented
31,3% of total lodging, they just repre-sented
3,9% of the rooms supply and 3,4%
of the national accommodation capacity
(even so, if we make a more meticulous
reading of data, excluding the greater
urban centres and the coastal zones, we
would get a better understanding of the
real situation). On the other hand, the
occupation-bed rates, in 2002 (just as in
previous years), were quite low (17,5%, on
average), far away from occupational
rates of the remaining categories of tour-istic
establishments (estimated to have
reached 41,1%).
An obvious seasonal pattern in the
tourist demand is verified, not only in the
foreign visitors' behaviour but also in the
national ones. Meanwhile, national visi-tors
demand is significantly less concen-trated
than the foreigner one.
Graph 2
Nights spent in TRA estimates, by nationality, NUTS II (2002)
0
50.000
100.000
150.000
200.000
250.000
300.000
Norte Centro Lisboa e
Vale do
Tejo
Alentejo Algarve R.A.
Açores
R.A.
Madeira
Total
Portugal
Estrangeiro
Graph 3
Occupation rates, by NUTS II (2002)
0,0
10,0
20,0
30,0
40,0
50,0
60,0
70,0
Janeiro
Fevereiro
Março
Abril
Maio
Junho
Julho
Agosto
Setembro
Outubro
Novembro
Dezembro
Norte
Centro
Lisboa e Vale do Tejo
Alentejo
Algarve
R. A. Açores
R. A. Madeira
Total
Laurentina Cruz Vareiro and J. Cadima Ribeiro 199
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 5(2). 2007 ISSN 1695-7121
Graph 4
Occupation rates, by type (2002)
0,0
5,0
10,0
15,0
20,0
25,0
30,0
35,0
40,0
45,0
50,0
Janeiro
Fevereiro
Março
Abril
Maio
Junho
Julho
Agosto
Setembro
Outubro
Novembro
Dezembro
Turismo de Habitação
Turismo Rural
Agro-turismo
Casas de Campo
Total
In fact, seasonality is a major problem
that the TRA has to face, representing
the months of July to September those
where the demand is larger (with occupa-tional
rates above 20%), reaching, in to-tal,
about 45% of the total annual book-ing.
January, November and December
correspond to the low season (with occu-pational
rates under 10%).
Such seasonal patterns may find ex-planation
in the fact that some of the
TRA establishments do not open on an
annual basis. They are usually closed
during the low season, that is, the tradi-tionally
low season in what regards sun
and seaside tourism.
If one observes the occupation-bed
rates, by types of TRA facilities, we rec-ognised
that Casas de Campo are the
TRA establishments with higher occupa-tional
rates (30,1%, in 2002). There, the
seasonal levels are less evident, which
allows to justify last years increase in the
number of this type of establishments.
Case studies
Based on empirical research carried
out in Caminha and Paredes de Coura
Portuguese municipalities, this study
seeks to understand the specific paths
that took the TRA implementation in the
above mentioned municipalities and to
present a preliminary evaluation of the
social and economic impacts of the strate-gies
followed.
These two municipalities of the Minho-
Lima NUT III are located in the north-west
of Portugal, in the border with Spain
(Galiza). However, Caminha is located in
the coast-line and has already some tradi-tion
in TRA, while Paredes de Coura,
inland town of Alto Minho, seems being
now discovering this touristic product.
The data were collected through face-to-
face inquiry, directed to the universe of
TRA establishments installed in the terri-tories
we chose to analyse. The interviews
took place between November and De-cember
2004. The receptivity to the in-quiry
has shown to be high, existing just
a case in Caminha and two cases in the
Paredes de Coura municipality where we
found not readiness to answer to the
questionnaire. In these three cases the
data was collected from official statistical
sources.
In the next section of the paper we
present the results we got. In order to
better design future approaches to the
issue of taking profit from resources en-dowment
of territories, after the results
presentation we suggest some policy im-plications
extracted from these two case
studies.
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The case of Caminha
The municipality of Caminha is di-vided
in 20 parishes2, distributed by an
area of about 138 km2. According to the
2001 Census, Caminha possessed 16 897
inhabitants, having benefited from a
population increase since the previous
census. Its active population rounded 7
thousand inhabitants, distributed by the
tertiary sector (59%), the secondary sector
(34%) and the primary one, with just 7%
of the active population.
Endowed with varied and attractive
landscapes, the municipality of Caminha
possesses diversified and qualified natu-ral,
patrimonial and cultural resources,
which allowed the growth of the tourism
industry, mainly the one related with sun
and seaside. However, the whole year,
mostly during the periods of festivities
and in the weekends, many people choose
Caminha as their tourist destination. It is
also elected as local for having a second
residence.
The geomorphologic configuration is
quite varied. It is a place to where con-verge
three rivers (Minho, Coura and
Âncora). It is also endowed with some
hills and small mountains. Those are the
cases of Argela, Venade, Vilarelho, Cris-telo
and Arga, whose quota approaches
the 700 meters of altitude. In almost the
whole municipality, the climate is mild
and reasonable pleasant, with strong
influence of the sea.
The TRA has some presence in
Caminha, not just because of its historical
and architectonic heritage, namely its old
and elegant houses, but also because visi-tors
have the possibility of exploring the
existing exuberant environment and
landscapes, as already mentioned.
In the Caminha municipality, the TRA
is represented by the houses shown in
Table 3.
The analysis of Table 3 allows conclud-ing,
on one hand, that these houses are
present in just six of the twenty parishes
of the municipality and, on the other
hand, that all the dwellings are located in
the coastline, extending for the whole
coast of Caminha. Of those establish-ments,
one of them is devoted to the mo-dality
of Hotel Rural 3 (in the beginning it
was classified as Turismo Rural), another
takes the form of Turismo de Habitação,
and the remaining five are devoted to
Turismo Rural.
In what concerns the characteristics of
the TRA establishments and evolution of
the property, Table 4 synthesizes some
important additional elements.
The three houses placed closer to the
centre of Caminha (Quinta da Graça,
Casa de Leiras and Casa do Esteiró) have
a high historical and architectonic value
and they suffered slight alterations re-garding
its original style.
The remaining ones, equally of recog-nized
historical and architectonic value,
were in the past the head of agricultural
explorations that, with time, were broken
into fragments. Nowadays, in none of the
cases agricultural activities still occur. As
a consequence, the surrounding lands
have given place to beautiful gardens and
fantastic landscapes.
Identification of the
houses
TRA types of
facilities
Parish Distance to mu-nicipality
centre
Activity be-ginning
Hotel Rural Casa da Anta HR Lanhelas 6 km 1983
Quinta da Graça TH Vilarelho 0,5 km 1985
Casa da Eira TR Moledo 2,5 km 1991
Casa da Torre TR Ancora 9 km 1995
Casa de Leiras TR Matriz 0,5 km 2001
Quinta da Cantareira TR Vilar de Mouros 5 km 2002
Casa do Esteiró TR Vilarelho 1,5 km -
Table 3. Identification and location of the TRA establishments, in 2004 (Caminha). Source: Authors’
elaboration
Laurentina Cruz Vareiro and J. Cadima Ribeiro 201
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 5(2). 2007 ISSN 1695-7121
Identification of the houses Total area of the
property
Century of con-struction
Generations in
the family
Before
TRA
Hotel Rural Casa da Anta Nr XVII 2 Farm
Quinta da Graça 1,5 ha XVII Acquired Dwelling
Casa da Eira 5000 m2 XIX Acquired Farm
Casa da Torre 5000 m2 XIX 3 Dwelling
Casa de Leiras 2 ha XVII/XVIII Since always Dwelling
Quinta da Cantareira 4800 m2 XVIII Acquired Farm
Casa do Esteiró - XVIII Since always Dwelling
Table 4. Brief characterization of the TRA establishments (Caminha). Source: Authors’ elaboration. * Nr –
Didn’t answer
All the houses have been restored in
its interior to provide their tourists with
modern-day comforts, while still preserv-ing
the original architecture. Just in two
cases the owners made use of public fi-nancial
supports for the accomplished
improvements. In the remaining cases
they used their own capitals and bank
credit.
In what regards the characteristics of
the establishments, Table 5 supplies a
general picture.
Rooms and services
HR Casa da
Anta
Quinta
Graça
Casa
Eira
Casa
Torre
Casa
Leiras
Quinta da
Cantareira
Casa de
Esteiró
Meals room X** X* X* X* X* X* X*
Private living room X X
Common living room X X X X X X
Card/billiard room X*** X
Swimming pool X X X X
Children’s playground X
Bicycles X X X
Table 5. Rooms and services available to tourists (Caminha)Source: Authors’ elaboration. * only breakfast //
** it has a restaurant // *** in construction
As shown by Table 5, excluding the
TRA unit that possesses a restaurant, all
the houses serve only breakfast (accord-ing
to Portuguese rules, that meal is in-cluded
in the price of the accommoda-tion).
The reason pointed out by the op-erators
comes from the existence in the
neighbourhood of quality restaurants.
Besides the comfort, we could under-stand
that there is some concern with the
entertainment and pleasure the guests
can have. Thus, the houses are providing
on-site facilities in order to please the
tourist and keep him occupied. The prox-imity
to sea and fluvial beaches was the
justification pointed out by two of the
touristic houses for not having a swim-ming
pool, although they recognize the
importance of this kind of equipment.
It is useful to mention that, although
all the houses are open during all the
year, the touristic demand is highly sea-sonal,
being concentrate on the months
from June to September, just as it hap-pens
at the national level, with average
length of stay of 4 days. The age groups
that demands more this touristic product
in Caminha is the one aged from 30 to 60
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PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 5(2). 2007 ISSN 1695-7121
years, not only in the national tourists'
case, but also in the foreigners' one. Ac-cording
to the data collected, one may
conclude that the Spanish tourist demand
isn’t relevant, in spite of the proximity
with Galiza. By nationality, visitors of
Caminha TRA units come, mostly, from
Germany, United Kingdom and Holland.
This is remarkably similar to what hap-pens
at national level. Another issue we
would like to underline is the kind of at-tendance
it is offered by these TRA
houses. As a matter of fact, there isn’t a
standardised treatment of the guests,
that is, each house receives them differ-ently,
although having in mind to receive
the visitors with quality.
As it was already mentioned, the Hotel
Rural Casa da Anta, complementarily to
the TRA accommodation facility, has a
typical restaurant, which makes available
the typical gastronomy of Minho. This
restaurant serves not only the tourists
accommodated in the TRA unit but also
any other consumer, and, this way, con-stitutes
a complement (appreciable) of
revenue.
The implemented inquiry allowed,
equally, to conclude that the management
of the touristic houses is driven by people
that already has an advanced age: just in
Quinta da Graça case the age is inferior
to 60 years. Apart the case of the just
mentioned TRA unit, whose owner is a
Dutch lady, the remaining ones have Por-tuguese
owners, although just one is
natural of the Caminha municipality.
The data also show that the proprie-tors
have, in general, a high education
level. Regarding the employment gener-ated,
the collected data make clear that
the amount of contracted workers is very
reduced and comes, mostly, from the mu-nicipality,
itself. The level of instruction
is low and in contrast with what is com-mon
in the tourism sector, as an all, these
employees work the whole year in the
touristic houses.
As a final note, it is important to men-tion
the dissatisfaction shown by the TRA
owners regarding the promotion made of
its tourist offer, criticizing the official
organisms (national, regional and local)
as well as the TRA proprietors' associa-tions,
PRIVETUR and TURIHAB. The
contacted tourism operators recognise
they get large advantages from their
partnerships with tourism agencies,
mainly in what refers to foreigners’ re-cruitment.
This same idea emerged also
in Paredes de Coura, to which we will
refer in the next section.
Some owners of the TRA units re-vealed,
equally, disappointment for the
lack of cooperation and dynamism of their
business partners. Some have referred
that there are operators that show satis-faction
with the seasonal character of the
existing touristic demand, not demon-strating
interest in the change of the
‘state of the things’.
The case of Paredes de Coura
Located in the heart of Alto Minho, the
municipality of Paredes de Coura incor-porates
21 parishes, distributed by 138,4
km2. According to the Census of 2001, its
population was 9415 inhabitants, repre-senting
a decrease of 9,8% in the resident
population since 1991.
The analysis of the evolution and dis-tribution
of the active population by main
activity sectors allows emphasising the
change in the structure of the economic
activities this municipality faced across
recent decades, from a starting point of
an agricultural base. In fact, since the
80’s that the primary sector has been
suffering a substantial decrease. The em-ployment
in this activity sector has fallen
from 47% in 1991 to 18,5% in 2001. On
the other hand, the secondary and terti-ary
sectors faced a strong increment, oc-cupying
in 2001, 38,1 and 43,4% of the
labour force, respectively.
The municipality’s historical, monu-mental
and artistic heritage includes
meaningful archaeological and ethnologi-cal
remains, milestones, Roman bridges,
medieval portions of the ‘Portuguese
Route to Santiago’, a medieval bridge, the
Romanesque church of Rubiães, the pro-tected
natural area of Corno do Bico,
within other visiting attractions. This
makes of Paredes de Coura a privileged
area to the development of rural tourism.
In this sense, it is strange that 70% of the
TRA establishments have just appeared
in the last three years.
The next table (Table 6) identifies the
existing TRA houses and it locates them
regarding the centre of Paredes de Coura.
As illustrated by the table 6, only five
Laurentina Cruz Vareiro and J. Cadima Ribeiro 203
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from twenty-one parishes of Paredes de
Coura offer this type of tourist accommo-dation.
Just one TRA unit is placed at
less than 5 km from the centre of the mu-nicipality,
and all of them are sharply
inserted in rural space. It is likewise im-portant
to mention that two of the estab-lishments
also benefit of the proximity of
the protected natural area of Corno do
Bico.
The TRA supply of Paredes de Coura
is scarce, basically it offers the Turismo
Rural type, having opened recently a
Casa de Campo (Quinta de S.Roque).
Despite the existence in the municipal-ity
of noble houses from the 16th, the 17th
and the 18th centuries (houses with rec-ognised
architectonic value and typically
rural characteristics), which have be-longed
to wealthy aristocratic farmers, or
others from the 19th century, belonging to
the great bourgeoisie, this didn’t favour
the development of TRA activity until
very recently. In fact, being not available
traditional tourism accommodation in
Paredes de Coura (the existing accommo-dation
unit was just a 1st category pen-sion),
one should expect a stronger initia-tive
from TRA potential operators in or-der
to capture the forecasted opportunity.
What ever the reason was, it is interest-ing
to verify that more than 50% of the
TRA establishments began to operate just
in the last two years.
Differently from the Caminha case,
the issue of public financial helps to TRA
was decisive to the owners of these tourist
establishments. Indeed, the possibility of
reconstructing and adapting the houses to
the comforts of nowadays, with the guar-antee
of preservation of the architectonic
heritage, was fundamental for the begin-ning
of the touristic activity in Paredes de
Coura. In this sense, having in mind the
declarations of the interviewed owners,
their motivation was more the preserva-tion
of the houses than to become TRA
operators.
The characteristics of the TRA estab-lishments
we can find in Paredes de
Coura are shown in the table below.
Identification of the
houses
TRA types of fa-cilities
Parish Distance to Paredes
de Coura
Activity be-ginning
Casa do Paço TR Ferreira 5,5 km 1994
Casa Paz do Outeiro TR Ferreira 6 km 1994
Casa Cerejas TR Bico 5,2 km 2004
Quinta da Cruz TR Linhares 6 km 2003
Sonho da Seara TR Bico 5,5 km 2004
Quinta de Favães TR Moselos 3,5 km 2002
Quinta S. Roque CC Rubiães 7 km 2004
Table 6. Identification and location of the TRA establishments, in 2004 (Paredes de Coura). Source: Authors’
elaboration
Identification of the
houses
Total area of the
property
Century of
construction
Generations in
the family
Before
TRA
Casa do Paço 5,2 ha XVI Acquired Dwelling
Casa Paz do Outeiro 1,5 ha XIX 3 Dwelling
Casa Cerejas 2 ha XVIII 3 Farm
Quinta da Cruz 3,5 há XVIII 4 Farm
Sonho da Seara 1 ha XVIII Acquired Farm
Quinta de Favães - XVII Since always Farm
Quinta S. Roque - - - Farm
Table 7. Brief characterization of the TRA establishments (Paredes de Coura). Source: Authors’ elaboration
204 Sustainable use of endogenous touristic resources of rural areas ...
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Although, these tourist houses are
nowadays small properties, they use to be
part of large agricultural explorations
that, with the time, were fractionated.
Presently, in none of the cases agricul-tural
activities have place to complement
the touristic activity. However, in the
case of one unit, it existed until recently
the handmade production of goat cheese,
in which the tourists could participate.
The cheese was commercialized with suc-cess;
however the lady in charge had to
suspend the activity for lack of means,
above all human resources.
All the contacted TRA houses were re-cuperated
in its interior to offer the com-forts
demanded by the tourist vocation
they have developed, making use of public
financial support, with one exception
where just own capitals were used. Some
of the owners declared to have acquired
and recuperated old and rustic furniture,
as well as ornamental objects to decorate
the interiors and to turn them more con-sentaneous
with the external environ-ment.
The contiguous lands were also
recovered, resulting beautiful landscaped
spaces, endowed with entertainment
equipments.
In what concern the TRA owner's pro-file,
in the majority of the cases they are
females (with one only exception, that
also corresponds to the older operator),
with an average of age around the 52
years. They detain university degrees
(also here, the exception corresponds to
the proprietor above mentioned). All of
them have Portuguese nationality but
just three of them are natural of the mu-nicipality
of Paredes de Coura.
With respect to the services available
in the establishments, Table 8 provides
the necessary information.
Rooms and services
Casa do
Paço
Casa Paz
Outeiro
Casa
Cerejas
Quinta
Cruz
Sonho
Seara
Quinta
Favães
Quinta S.
Roque
Meals room X* X** X** X* X** X* X*
Private living room X X X
Common living room X X X X X
Card/billiard room X X X X X
Swimming pool X*** X X X X X X
Children’s playground X
Bicycles X X X
Horses X
Table 8. Rooms and services available to the tourists (Paredes de Coura)Source: Authors’ elaboration. *
only breakfast // ** meals may be served upon prior request and agreement with the proprietor //
*** in construction
Considering the above shown data, we
may conclude that just three houses serve
main meals to its customers, even so, by
request. The remaining establishments
just provide breakfast. The reason
pointed out to this is the short perma-nence
of the visitors in the houses, since
the tourists use them, mostly, as support
for the exploration of the surrounding
territory.
The Casa Paz do Outeiro unit provides
its guests the opportunity to ride, which
is a strong surplus value, as declared by
the landlady. All establishments have
swimming pool (excepting Casa do Paço
that foresees its supply soon), equipment
considered by all the proprietors essential
for this type of establishment, located in
inland areas.
In what concerns paid workers em-ployment
in these touristic units, in the
majority of the situations it is feminine,
with low instruction level - almost exclu-sively
the primary school. Their recruit-ment
takes place in the municipality.
Additionally, although the experience
of most of the houses is still short, from
the results of the inquiry we got, we can
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materialise a few remarks: the first one is
to underline the existence of a seasonal
demand, in the summer; the second re-gards
the average length of stay, that
goes from three to eight days; the third is
to note that the majority of the national
clients is coming from the north of the
country and Lisbon and Valley of Tejo.
We can also add that foreigners come
mostly from Germany and Holland and
that national tourists are, predominantly,
between 31 and 60 years old. In the for-eigner
visitor’s case, they use to be from
the age groups above the 46 years old.
As a final comment, we must refer
that, although this touristic product is
very recent and has a very restricted ter-ritorial
expression in Paredes de Coura,
the TRA has been generating some bene-fits
to the municipality. This is the case in
what refers to lodging services, particu-larly.
From this circumstance the tourist
is lesser than before a passing visitor and,
by consequence, other activities, like ef-fect
restaurants and handicraft, are tak-ing
some advantage.
Being a recent phenomenon, the ex-pectations
are great. The proprietors that
we have contacted believe that this tour-istic
activity has real potential as instru-ment
of Paredes de Coura development.
They believe that, for going far, it is only
necessary the authorities put a larger
interest in the defence and promotion of
this touristic product. Namely, the TRA
operators claim a larger involvement of
the local authorities, establishing a con-certed
strategy regarding the natural and
built heritage preservation, the promotion
of the local gastronomy and the rehabili-tation
of the handicraft. This would allow
taking better profit of the local endoge-nous
resources and contributing to sea-sonality
reduction.
Policy implications and conclusions
The tourist use of the rural areas and,
in particular, the specific touristic prod-uct
we selected to study, has generated
great expectation in many Portuguese
regions. Likewise, it was followed with
enormous curiosity by academics and
other agents worried with development
issues.
In the last three decades, the tradi-tional
sun and seaside tourism has
marked the economic performance of Al-garve
and Madeira regions and, in a
smaller degree, the one of Lisbon. Taking
advantage of the natural potential of
those territories, the tourism sector has
confirmed itself as an important income
and employment generator. Despite this,
it was an additional cause of the strongly
asymmetric and coastal growth of the
country.
To constitute an instrument of devel-opment
of the less favoured regions, the
Portuguese tourism needs to decentralise
and to diversify itself, taking advantage
of the potential of the territories and con-figuring
alternative tourism products. In
a certain sense, it was that the idea that
informed the touristic organisation of the
territory that started to be implemented
by 1986. However, the ‘National Tourism
Plan’, established then, was soon dis-carded,
getting lost the regional emphasis
base pursued. As a consequence, inertia
took charge of retaking the unbalanced
path and limited the use of potential re-sources
of the regions, which was the
starting point of the plan.
Though, the beauty of the landscapes,
the architectonic wealth of secular build-ings,
the exuberance of the gastronomy
and of many cultural manifestations are a
feature of multiple Portuguese regions, as
it is the Minho case, in general, and the
one of the municipalities of Caminha and
Paredes de Coura. The excessive promo-tional
investment made in the sun and
seaside tourism has limited the commer-cial
management of those other resources.
As a result, less massified products are
still waiting for their chance. They are, of
course, more demanding in what regards
to service quality, but, certainly, can
carry progress in the sense of sustainable
development and territorial balance.
Such complains are made by the TRA
operators and by those agents that defend
this touristic product is able of generating
wealth and employment at local and re-gional
level. To reach these kind of objec-tives,
on one hand, TRA must use quality
as a distinguishing factor and, on the
other hand, it needs to efficiently explore
the potential markets (that nobody
doubts that exist). Financial resources
must be made available for marketing
promotion, but the articulation of efforts
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PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 5(2). 2007 ISSN 1695-7121
among the actors, either publics or pri-vate,
is also needed.
Meanwhile, one should remark that,
sometimes, excessive hope was placed in
the creation of employment and income
that the TRA product is able to generate.
Regarding the issue, we think that, even
if the results are quite modest, they are
less hopeful, mostly, just because the
expectations were excessive.
Traditionally, the rural space was an
universe of activities, each one supplying
a part of the resources that sustained the
installed communities. The deficit of
functional diversity of the rural areas was
the result of the industrial revolution and
of the subsequent urbanization. There-fore,
we cannot fight the evils that the
rural areas suffer, and that have been
driving to its economic failure and intense
demographic exodus, just with the key
‘Tourism in Rural Areas’. Obviously, TRA
can play an important role, as large as
the promotion policies are consequent,
but certainly it won't be the only solution
for countryside. This ambition becomes
unfeasible given the limited and located
expression of the resources used by TRA.
This is also the reason why it doesn't
make sense to think it will be the answer
for all and any part of the national terri-tory.
Just as it happens with the sun and
seaside tourism, TRA will have (has) the
territorial concentrated expression that
the singular resources of the regions
makes possible. This can be verified in
the actual geographical expression of the
TRA product in the national territory
and, also, in the examples given by the
municipalities of Caminha and Paredes
de Coura.
In what concerns to the Caminha and
Paredes de Coura examples, the survey
we carried out allowed verifying that an
important tourist potential exists. This
potential comes from the variety and sin-gularity
of its resources, and from the
image of quality it benefits, despite the
obvious limitations in terms of the human
resources qualifications we found.
However, it will be important to know
the level the implemented model is able
to generate sustainable development,
through a correct horizontal integration
in the local productive system. It is like-wise
relevant to identify if the capabilities
and available resources of related activi-ties
can be used, complementing and
enlarging the offer of a diversified set of
goods and services by the surrounding
territory.
From another point of view, just as it
was underlined by the contacted proprie-tors,
it is important to give concrete steps
as regards to promotions policies. TRA
must be part of an endogenous resources
promotion strategy, in order to avoid that
this touristic product gets an economic
impact below the expected one and re-stricted
to the tourism operators.
The regional and local authorities,
particularly the regional commissions of
tourism and the public authorities, have
an irreplaceable role to play in this area:
the regional commissions of tourism will
have to assume a more active and effec-tive
role in the creation of true tourism
‘cluster’, instead of being just mere pro-motion
agents; the local authorities, by
their side, have to be more sensitive to
the demands of total quality imposed by
the sector. Concretely, they will have to
assume a more severe attitude in what
concerns to the tourist organisation and
to the municipality territory organisation,
from a general point of view, and to value
the traditional architectonics’ standards.
On the other hand, both entities (insti-tutions
and tourist operators) will have to
pay more attention to the consumers'
preferences. These preferences will be, at
last, what will dictate the success or the
failure of the strategy undertaken.
References
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1995 “A evolução recente da política regional.
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Bote Gómez, V.
2001 Turismo en espacio rural. Rehabilitación
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Boullon, Roberto
2000 Ecoturismo – Sistemas naturales y
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Cerro, Francisco Leno
1993 Tecnicas de evaluacion del potencial tu-ristico,
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Cunha, Licínio
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Sítes in the internet:
- www.adeturn.pt
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- www.turihab.pt
NOTAS
1 Turismo de Habitação (tourism in manor-houses)
– this is a family-style accommodation
service for tourists provided in old private houses
which, because of their architectural, historic or
artistic value, are representative of a certain
period, namely manor-houses or palaces (DGT,
2004). Turismo Rural (rural tourism) – this is a
family-style accommodation service for tourists
provided in private cottages which, because of
their building materials and other characteristics,
form an integral part of the typical regional archi-tecture
(DGT, 2004). Agro-Turismo (agricultural
tourism) - this is a family-style accommodation
service for tourists provided in private farm-houses,
enabling guests to follow and discover
more about farming activity or to take part in the
work that is done there, respecting the rules es-tablished
by the manager of the business (DGT,
2004). Turismo de Aldeia (village tourism) – a
group of at least five houses located in a village,
historic village or rural centre, managed in an
integrated way by one single managing body. The
design of these houses and the materials used in
their building must be such as to ensure that they
are fully integrated into the village’s typical
architecture (DGT, 2004). Casas de Campo
(country houses) - this is an accommodation
service for tourists provided by private houses in
rural areas, whether or not the owners or legal
proprietors inhabit them. Their design, building
materials and other characteristics must be inte-grated
into both the architecture and rustic envi-ronment
of the area in which they are located
(DGT, 2004).
2 The smallest administrative level existing in
Portugal.
3 Hotel Rural (rural hotel) - hotel structure lo-cated
in rural areas out of the administrative town
of the municipality whose population, according
to the last demographic census, shall be more
than 20 000 inhabitants, whose propose is to offer
accommodation and other related services, in-cluding
meals; this services imply a monetary
cost (DGT, 2004).
Recibido: 27 de junio de 2006
Reenviado: 9 de diciembre de 2006
Aceptado: 18 de marzo de 2007
Sometido a evaluación por pares anónimos