| Abstract |
Tourism is one of the economic activities that most greatly affects in Spain and the European Union. Actually, Europe is the number one tourist destination in the world. Nevertheless, the regulation of the tourism has been based on criterion of amount, but not in quality of service and in the sustainability of tourism. The European Union has understood that the essential characteristic of the European tourism must be the sustainability if we want that Europe continues being the first tourist destination in the world. It identifies sustainability with competitiveness, quality and development of the European tourism business model. So, sustainability was also widely understood to apply not only to the conservation of the environment in activities related to tourism, but also to the protection of historical heritage, the cultural integrity of destinations, the quality of welcome offered at these sites and the stability and quality of work positions in the sector. To obtain this aim, the new kinds of tourism can be an essential instrument, for example, the tourist thematic routes, because its importance as an economically, socially and culturally cohesive element for the territories is indisputable. Nevertheless, keeping our focus on Spain, it is currently the Autonomous Communities which possess a competitive exclusivity in this matter, and all of these bodies have passed laws of tourism planning, in which environmental protection is anticipated, but with an intensity which is fairly relative, and of course, in some way from the integrated perspective articulated by the EU. |