Alternative Tourism on Gran Canaria

Bachelorarbeit von Franziska Herms

Abstract:

When thinking about the island of Gran Canaria hardly anyone has the image of endless green and yellow flushing mountains, little traditional colourful villages, undiscovered wine-cellars and hidden cultural treasures in mind. But this may change in the future, as Gran Canaria is on its way to a new tourism development, in search for alternative tourism.

In recent years, there has been a rapid rise in interest for alternative forms of tourism, which are frequently presented as alternatives to traditional mass tourism. Factors responsible for the enhanced awareness include a greater awareness of the environmental impacts of tourism, a growing demand from tourists for new experiences and economic development policies. Today leisure and tourism are more than just elements in social life, but also indicate the individual's position in society. People are looking for sporting challenges like biking, climbing or rafting, or want to collect experience of life inside foreign cultures.

On Gran Canaria alternative tourism expresses the alternative to the island’s mass tourism. Nearly three million visitors have arrived annually on the island, but within the last years these numbers are decreasing constantly. An action out of this development was the implementation of a diversification policy, while focusing on other tourism resources Gran Canaria can present.

The island offers much more than only sandy-white beaches and crystal clear water all year long. These new tourism products focus on the natural resources of the island in its interior, where the original life of indigenous people still can be witnessed. Products like rural tourism, activity tourism or golf tourism are becoming here more and more importance.

Until now, only La Gomera and El Hierro are known for their alternative vacation offers within the Canary Islands. But this may change, as the island opens its doors for a new type of traveller trough a very diverse tourist offer than the island was known for since years. There have been many ups and downs in the tourism development of the island in the last years, but it seems like if the island learned from its mistakes in the past and found a different way for its future tourist development. A new age of tourism is about to come for Gran Canaria.

The objective of this paper is to introduce the reader to the term ‘alternative tourism’ by portraying the particularities of this kind of tourism and show off the overall shape of alternative tourism, which can be found in chapter two.

The island of Gran Canaria was chosen as it is a mass tourism destination, which tries to change its course of tourism to a more sustainable tourist development. A presentation of the destination, with its history, its economical and environmental features and its tourism development from the beginning until today, can be examined in chapter three to five.

An analysis of the introduction of new tourism products, its possible impacts and the likely future prospects of those products on the island were accomplished in chapter six. The main questions hereby were, if the development of alternative tourism products can be successful in the long run and if they can replace the traditional tourism segment, as Gran Canaria started its diversification policy to become more independent from its sun and beach segment.

For obtaining reliable information this paper has been written on the island of Gran Canaria. Through close contact with the Tourist Board of Gran Canaria and other alternative tourism associations an assembly of confidential information was achievable. Other information was employed through secondary and primary research. The secondary data was provided mainly by books from the library of the Gran Canarian University of Las Palmas and by newspaper articles from local papers, like “Canarias7”, “La Provincia” and “Canarias Ahora”. Therefore most of the literature has been read in Spanish.

Primary data was collected through interviews. For obtaining a more closely look on the topic of alternative tourism on Gran Canaria, the procedure of a face-to-face interview with experts was chosen. This primary research collection technique tends to be considered as part of qualitative research as the interviewer can also clarify certain instructions or questions.

The interviews were all realized on Gran Canaria. The conversations lasted approximately an hour. Importance was laid on personal interviews, for having the opportunity to probe answers by asking the respondent to clarify or expand on a specific response. This method also allows the exchange of further material and information regarding the topic.

The questions were prepared before the interview, specialized in the field of work of the respondents. Furthermore, personal questions were asked regarding their opinion of tourism on Gran Canaria. Those questions were the same for everyone. In some cases the questionnaire was sent out by email some days before the meeting.

The aim of the interview process was not to work off every question in order, but rather to get them answered out of the conversation. Each interview was recorded by taking notes, which were afterwards summarized. The interviews were all held in the native language of the respondents, thus in Spanish. The answers of the interviews are provided within the context of the paper, while the answers of personal questions of all interviews can be found listed in the appendix.

The data gathered from the primary research, will be presented as the results of the investigation carried out by the researcher during this paper.

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