Tourism Carrying Capacity Calculation Tool
The continuous increase of tourism flows in urban areas and its undesirable effects, especially during and after health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, led the ALTER ECO projects to develop the Tourism Carrying Capacity tool. This tool allows the calculation of the carrying capacity limit and suggests, based on the result, possible measures to be applied that were already tested during the project duration.
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Calculating the carrying capacity of a tourism destination using a linear programming method is a process that follows the next operative steps:
1. Identify the tourism subsystems of a destination, especially regarding tourism facilities and services;
2. Classify the type of users that are often utilizing those sub-systems;
3. Determine the level of usage of these subsystems by user profile;
4. Proceed with the quantitative analysis with the fine scope to maximize the revenue of the destination through understanding the daily expenditure per each profile.
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Replicability conditions
Urban areas that would like to implement the Tourism Carrying Capacity tool need to fill in the software fields. The resources required are differentiated according to the level of available data at the destination:
Scenario 1 - If the destination does not have the data, it needs the intervention of different experts, as well as the help of a university, a study center or a tourism observatory to manage the collection. The process can take a year and a half or 2 years.
Scenario 2 - If the destination already has the necessary data, the process is faster because only the software fieldsl needs to be filled in. In this case, it is necessary to update the data at least once a year and to call on experts to interpret the results in order to facilitate the action of local administrations.