Crowding Perception at the Archaeological Site of Tulum, Mexico: A Key Indicator for Sustainable Cultural Tourism

Fernando Enseñat-Soberanis and Rocío Blanco-Gregory ()
Additional contact information
Fernando Enseñat-Soberanis: School of Anthropology, Autonomous University of Yucatan, Kilómetro 1 Carretera Mérida-Tizimin, Mérida C.P. 97305, Mexico
Rocío Blanco-Gregory: School of Business, Finance and Tourism, University of Extremadura, 10071 Cáceres, Spain

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 10, 1-12

Abstract: Just before the lockdown caused by the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19, the archeological sites close to the Mexican Caribbean were having an exponential number of visitors. The restrictions on traveling due to the pandemic resulted in a decrease in the number of visitors; however, the visitor flow is rising again. This scenario provides a historical opportunity to carry out strategies towards the visitor’s management as well as to awake consciousness of the damage caused by the excess of visitors in cultural heritage sites. Establishing limits on the number of visitors is a well-recognized strategy to achieve sustainability in a cultural heritage site. An excess of visitors has an impact on two elements: the cultural resource and the quality of the visitor experience. Crowding perception has been demonstrated to be an effective indicator to evaluate the visitor experience and to determine standards of quality in cultural and natural sites. The place of origin of visitors is among the sociodemographic factors that can affect crowding standards. This study used a quantitative questionnaire based on normative theory and a visual method to identify the crowding standards of national and international visitors at the Mayan archaeological site of Tulum located in the vicinity of the Mexican Caribbean resort of Cancun. The results show that general visitor acceptability decreases as the number of people increase. International visitors are less tolerant to crowding than national visitors as they show the most restrictive acceptable level of people at the same time at the archaeological site. Findings are discussed in terms of their management implications for the development of a tourism-carrying capacity framework for cultural sites, thereby contributing to the achievement of more sustainable cultural tourism.

Keywords: crowding; cultural tourism; sustainable tourism; visitor management; carrying capacity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/10/1651/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/10/1651/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:10:p:1651-:d:924490

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().