Aproximación al potencial turístico de los Territorios UNESCO de Extremadura

Tourism governance involves considering the level of participation of different stakehold-ers in decision-making regarding tourism planning and development in a given territory. It is necessary to know who these stakeholders are and their level of involvement in decision-mak-ing. Tourism is a phenomenon that tends to expand, occupying social, economic and cultural spaces that affect the resident population, so the distribution of the costs and benefits of its de-velopment must be shared among stakeholders in order to make it sustainable. In this work, the first thing that has been done is to delimit territorially and understand the tourist dimension of the UNESCO Environmental Corridor of Extremadura, using data from the Tourism Observa-tory of Extremadura and surveys of the visitors themselves. In parallel, the literature has been analysed, which has helped to determine dimensions and variables with respect to tourism gov-ernance, a questionnaire and evaluation scales have been designed, and a population universe has been constructed with actors who, based on the literature, form part of the tourism stake-holders. In terms of the results, as might be expected, the level of development of tourism governance varies from one territory to another, although in some aspects there is relative homoge-neity, for example, the low level of management from the perspective of gender and functional diversity. The findings coincide with the existing literature, fundamentally in the lack of development of policies that activate shared governance, but at the same time it is highlighted how participation strategies have been activated with UNESCO designations. The governance of the CMU territories stands out from other territories in the existence of strategic tourism develop-ment plans; in the fact that stakeholders were consulted in their elaboration; in the coordination that exists in the tourism sector; and in the development of various modalities of participation in the decision-making process.