Balance between Hosts and Guests: The Key to Sustainable Tourism in a Heritage City

Abstract

A sustainable city implies socio-economic characteristics that allow citizens to maintain a certain quality of life. However, the effect of overtourism in some tourist cities negatively affects the community. In this study, a methodology was developed to analyze how tourism affects the way of life of residents in Santiago de Compostela. This work aims to define a set of environmental and socio-economic indicators to assess the impact of tourism activity. To this end, surveys were carried out among the three groups involved in the tourism sector: Citizens, traders, and visitors. Thereby, data were collected from the responses to the surveys conducted. Finally, this set of indicators was aggregated to a sustainability score on a scale of 1 to 10. The results show a sustainability score of 6.84, and the main weak points were the mobility between the residence of citizens and peripheral areas and the change in the offerings by the commerce promoted by tourism. Consequently, this methodology is useful for policy makers when making decisions and proposing actions to foster sustainable tourism.