Towards a Sustainable Sun, Sea, and Sand Tourism: The Value of Ocean View and Proximity to the Coast

Abstract

Coastal tourism is expanding worldwide, mostly owing to the attraction to relevant ecosystem services such as the scenic beauty and recreational activities. The aim of this study was to analyze the value of these, using hedonic analysis by assessing how prices of hotel rooms are related to the scenic view, location, non-ecosystem amenities, and size of the hotels in three touristic areas of Veracruz, México. We found that, besides the size of the hotel and the number of non-ecosystem amenities, room prices increased by 8% and 57%, depending on the ocean view and accessibility to the beach, respectively. These results help to understand why hotels are built very close to the coastline, despite the high risk of extreme and frequent meteorological events. The unorganized and intense development of the tourist industry may act in contrast to the necessity for conservation of the natural ecosystems, rendering this activity highly unsustainable. The question is how to deal with the dilemma of tourism growth and conservation. We suggest some alternatives that might help with the conservation of natural ecosystems, while maintaining the combined provision of simultaneous coastal ecosystem services such as an aesthetically pleasing view and recreation, as well as additional services such as storm protection.

An Attempt to Characterize the “3S” (Sea, Sun, and Sand) Parameters: Application to the Galapagos Islands and Continental Ecuadorian Beaches

“…We present the results corresponding to the 64 studied beaches in Ecuador ordered in Table 2 by province; the first 10 beaches belong to the Galapagos Islands (Island Region), the following to Esmeraldas (19 sites), Manabí (27), and Santa Elena (8). Additional information on visitors' origin and the 3S parameters (ranked from 1 to 5) are also presented in Table 2.…”

“…The importance of in these countries is also reflected by the high number of direct and indirect jobs related to tourism: 66% in the Seychelles, 39.3% in Cabo Verde, 37.4% in the Maldives, 36.5% in Fiji, 29.8% in Jamaica, 22.6% in Mauritius, 20.7% in Bermuda, 19.6% in Tonga, and 9.9% in Cuba, although several negative fallouts on local population were also assessed [7]. Despite this, beach recreation has recorded little attention in the economic literature [8]. The Galapagos province consists of 234 islands, islets, and emerged rocks that give rise to an attractive and wide archipelago of great ecological importance [39].…”

An Inter-Comparison of the Holiday Climate Index (HCI:Beach) and the Tourism Climate Index (TCI) to Explain Canadian Tourism Arrivals to the Caribbean

“…Since the onset of mass tourism in the mid-20th century, the Caribbean has been a popular holiday destination and is now considered one of the most economically tourism-dependent regions in the world [2]. Although Caribbean islands offer a variety of natural and cultural tourism attractions, the 3S tourism product has dominated for decades [3,5]. The Caribbean has therefore been a focus of several tourist climate preference studies [24,31,[46][47][48] and was selected for the first application of the HCI:Beach because of its continuing importance as a global beach destination.…”

“…Considered one of the most tourism dependent regions in the world, the Caribbean attracts over 26 million international land-based arrivals per year (2% of the global market) [1], which contributes over $57 billion (or 15%) to the region's GDP and employs over 2.4 million people [2]. A major tourism resource, and one of the primary reasons visitors choose the Caribbean for their holidays, is the tropical climate [3][4][5]. Caribbean air temperatures range from 25-33 • C, sea temperatures from 26-30 • C, with a dry sunny season from December through April (i.e., peak tourism season) [6].…”

The increase in ecosystem services values of the sand dune succession in northeastern China

“…For example, the values of ecosystem services and their improvement are estimated with system dynamical models in coastal sand dunes in South Korea (You et al., 2018). Meanwhile, ecosystem services values in touristic infrastructure are measured using the cost of hotel rooms in coastal sand dunes in Mexico (Mendoza-González et al., 2018). Besides, ecosystem services values in stages in coastal sand dune succession are monetized and compared in Belgium (Van der Biest et al., 2017).…”