Residential tourism and municipal land use planning in Portugal
- Autores: José António Oliveira, Zoran Roca, Maria de Nazaré Oliveira Roca
- Localización: Turismo residencial: Nuevos estilos de vida: de turistas a residentes / coord. por Tomás Manuel Mazón Martínez, 2018, ISBN 978-84-1302-011-2, págs. 423-440
- Idioma: español
- Enlaces
-
Resumen
In Portuguese development policies, both territorial and sectoral ones, an ever increasing attention has been paid to the phenomenon of the residential tourism.
However, the very concept of residential tourism is still not clearly defined neither in the political and technical discourses addressing this phenomenon, nor in the tourism sector legislation and research. According to the official documents and declarations of policy makers of the sector, residential tourism in Portugal is perceived as a “tourist package” made of two main components:
(i) the real estate development of second homes, and (i) its complement with a range of support services that may include, among other, hotels and golf, or other activities related to tourism animation. The expected results of these two investment vectors are the increased loyalty and periods of stay, as well as reduction of seasonality of large flows of tourists to Portugal from major emission markets.
The marketing of second homes became possible since 1969 within the framework of different “tourist accommodation” categories, such as tourism lodges and villas, or tourism villages and resorts. How to explain the recent “new awakening” about this type of tourism real estate? Also, how to understand its non-proliferation across much larger parts of the Portuguese territory? Answers partly lay in the planning system that has been grasping with the land use modalities in Portugal since the end of 1970s. Although the application of defined perimeters of urban settlements has been strictly observed, the construction outside these perimeters has sometimes been tolerated, often defending the necessity to develop the tourism industry. To this end, more or less extensive zones of municipal territories with certain environmental amenities can be reserved in municipal plans for tourism use.
Yet, throughout the Portuguese land use planning process has been claimed that no construction development, unless it is in the common public interest, can collide with the values of natural environment preservation.
Evidently, there are conflicting interests between, on one side, state policies aimed at containing urbanization and protecting primary tourist resources that are pivotal for keeping Portugal as a high quality destination, and, on the other side, the ambitions of construction developers to multiply investments, especially in the real estate component as often the best and fastest source of revenue.
This paper is a contribution to a better understanding of the problem of the uncontrolled expansion of second homes and, correspondingly, of the heavily scrutinized so-called residential tourism in Portugal.
