A prospective analysis of nature tourism on the Jalisco coast

Abstract

The tourism sector has played an important role in the economic development of Mexico. The federal government has made tourism a priority because of the power it has to improve local conditions and generate jobs. Unlike sun and beach tourism, the possibilities of alternative tourism have been highlighted as a way to improve local conditions through local empowerment. Nature tourism has not managed to be a fully successful strategy to address the problems of poverty and marginalization of the rural environment, especially in terms of creating jobs and generating income for communities. The objective of this research is to analyze the elements that make up and intervene in the development of this sector and identify the areas of opportunity. Prospective methods have been used to create possible futures with the tools Mic-Mac® and Smic Prob-Expert®. The analysis of scenarios enabled us to identify future pictures with different probabilities of occurrence, among which a pessimistic, tendential and optimistic scenario was highlighted. The best optimistic scenario was selected and established as a baseline for the execution of the future of nature tourism on the Jalisco coast.