ABSTRACT
Tourism management is a topic of growing interest at the local level. In Chile, 108 new offices, departments, or directorates responsible for tourism were created within municipalities between 2010 and 2020. This article analyzes this development, addressing the following questions: Do touristic destinations in Chile have tourism development plans that guide the management of municipal authorities? What degree of progress in the implementation of their plans of action have these municipalities registered? The objective is to contribute to reflection on the scenario within which the country's touristic municipalities are currently operating. This is a key issue at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated international debate about the new conditions that tourist destinations must meet to accommodate visitor demand once borders reopen and confidence in travel recovers. © 2021 Universidad De Valparaiso. All Rights Reserved.
ABSTRACT
In recent years, the development of tourism in the world showed a favorable evolution, both in tourist arrivals, as well as in income, employment, and diversification of the hotel offerings, among other indicators. In the case of Chile, 2019 became the scene of a social outbreak, the effects of which on tourism caused a sharp reduction in the number of international tourist arrivals and generated an overall sense of insecurity for internal travelers. In this context, the authorities and entrepreneurs in the tourism sector were preparing to take on the challenge. Their idea was to promote an intense advertising campaign aimed at recovering demand. The objective of this article is to analyze the scenario facing the tourism sector in Chile based on the situation generated by the coronavirus and to identify some key challenges that the sector will have to face to overcome it by taking into account the factors that triggered the social conflict in the first place. To analyze the evolution of the Chilean situation, firstly, a descriptive methodology is applied to clearly identify the evolution of the situation during the first months of 2020 in Chile. Secondly, the epa (Events Protest Analysis) method is applied to analyze press publications. Regarding the visible impact of the pandemic, there is a 99,7% drop in tourist arrivals compared to August 2019 and a 45,2% drop in the employment of accommodation and food service personnel (Deputy Secretary of Tourism, 2020). Likewise, collective protest actions, unprecedented in the country, were observed in which negative attitudes toward visiting tourists were displayed by the local communities in towns that had registered few cases of coronavirus. This situation presents a complex challenge for tourist destinations and will require new research efforts in the tourism sector to generate knowledge and planning instruments that help to face the increasingly frequent crises.