Resumen de Tourism Space Revisited
In 1993 the author proposed a model of “tourism space in developing countries." Based on a review of development theories and spatial tourism development theories, he suggested that tourism development is not occurring uniformly within a country. He based his distinction primarily on the supply side with type of accommodation as the potentially best indicator. Yet, this supply-side approach completely ignores the demand side, namely the tourists. This article discusses the tourism space model with particular reference to the demand side or the tourists’ perspective. Using some of the forwarded indicators of the tourism space model and primary data from a developing country, it classifies tourists into an upper (formal) and lower (informal) circuit. The successful test of one of the notions, namely that lower circuit tourists do have a better regional distributional impact in a developing country than do their upper circuit counterparts, indicates the relevance of the tourism space model.
