Tourism and urban mobility. Towards an integrated agenda for European cities

Keywords: tourism, urban mobility, transport, Barcelona
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

The growth of tourism activity has generated important economic, social and environmental challenges for urban areas among which visitor mobility has become one of the key issues in the political agenda. Mobility is inherent to tourism and both tourism and mobility are fully intertwined and mutually constitutive phenomena of destinations. Despite that this relationship has often been neglected in the planning process of urban realities, we argue that there is a need to match strategies and programmes to pursue an integrated agenda in order to consider tourism activities in mobility planning and sustainable mobility in tourism strategies. An analytical proposal is set out in order to build an integrated agenda on tourism urban mobility based on the case study of Barcelona (Spain). The case study centres on analysis of external and primary empirical data, as well as technical and political documents. The state of the art on tourism urban mobility is first examined based on the literature review, in order to set a theoretical framework. Secondly, we identify the issues at stake for the tourism mobility agenda, structured in three dimensions: the tourist use of general transport and urban facilities; specific services and means of transportation related with tourism products and experiences; and specific tourism-related overcrowding issues. Finally, we set out the key elements for promoting the integration of tourism and mobility agendas in urban destinations based on a) governance framework; b) institutional arrangements; c) confluence in planning processes; and d) context-specific data on tourism and visitor mobilities.