Abstract

PRAT, José Ma.  and  CANOVES, Gemma. Cultural tourism as a complementary offer in coastal destinations: The case of the Costa Brava (Spain). Invest. Geog [online]. 2012, n.79, pp.119-135. ISSN 2448-7279.

The Costa Brava is a consolitaded coastal tourist destination, based on sun and sand tourism. In order to mitigate its decline, according to the traditional life-cycle of tourism products (Butler, 1980) and theories of productive restructuring (Agarwal, 2002, 2005), considering the impact of emerging market trends in such well-established tourism destinations, the Costa Brava has evolved to offer multiple recreational activities in order to renew the destination with emerging new products (Vera and Bath, 2010). One such activity is cultural tourism, with significant potential even with smaller capacity, in order to generate many sectorial and territorial changes. However, the diversification of the tourists demand new products and focuses on the search of sensations, the sense of the tourist event, the perception of the authenticity of the product and the conservation of the site (Dann, 1994; Urry, 1994). All these new elements are the cultural resources available to the tourism sector, that have increased in recent decades in advanced societies (Richards, 1996).

Keywords : Coastal tourism; cultural tourism; museums; tourists motivations; local development.