Abstract

SICILIA MUNOZ, Alejandrina De. Economic evaluation of the impact of cultural tourism in the city of Zacatecas. Invest. Geog [online]. 2012, n.78, pp.89-103. ISSN 2448-7279.

This essay has the purpose of evaluating the economic impact of cultural tourism in the city of Zacatecas, giving special emphasis to its historic downtown. Therefore this work examines briefly the change recorded in the shift of the economic activities in the city, before and after its historic downtown was declared Cultural Human Heritage by the UNESCO. Moreover, the evolution of the city of Zacatecas as a touristic destiny is described, as well as the changes that have taken place in the expansion of the touristic services such as hotels, number of rooms, number of tourists, economically active population and the incomes inside the context of the tourist activity in the city of Zacatecas. Furthermore, tourism in México is discussed, initially aimed at promoting places with tourist tradition inside the country with the idea of exploiting the existent cultural resources; continuing with the geographical and historical context of the city of Zacatecas; and its touristic evolution as an historic downtown. The methodology employed was the qualitative order in which, three were confirmed and completed, such as observation (tour of the city of Zacatecas and its historic downtown, cultural tourist sites), interviews ( with authorities implicated in heritage) and the lecture of texts related to the theme and its analysis (search and compilation of bibliography, cartography, statistics and newspapers), finally, to complete this methodology, the triangulation method was used to enrich this research (Ruíz, 2009). Having systematized the acquired information, it was analyzed using tables, graphs, and cartographic references at various scales. Thus, it was concluded that despite the growth of the tourist activity and despite the efforts made by the local government, the expected results have not been obtained.

Keywords : Cultural tourism; Human heritage; tourist services; tertiary activities; Zacatecas.