How to use sustainability indicators for tourism planning: The case of rural tourism in Andalusia (Spain)

This paper proposes an indicators system to analyse the sustainability of tourist activity at rural destinations in countries with a consolidated tourism sector. The proposed system aims at providing tourist managers and policy-makers with information to better understand the transition to sustainability at specific destinations and to encourage them to carry out corresponding policy and management responses. To illustrate how indicators can be quantified, we create a practical guideline on how to use the statistical information available. Likewise, we suggest a method for obtaining sustainability indexes by aggregation that reduces the subjectivity associated with the composite indicator. This procedure is based on the combination of principal component analysis and distance to a reference point.Together with the definition of sustainable tourism indicators, we explain how to use these systems and sustainability indexes to fulfil three practical uses in tourism sector planning: the comparison and characterisation of destinations, the definition of benchmarking practices, and the quantification of sustainable tourism objectives. Each practical use is illustrated using the case of rural zones in a consolidated destination such as Andalusia.

► We define an indicators system which is used to manage rural tourism at established destinations.
► We present how to define a database to quantify the indicators system.
► We use DPC indicator method to obtain composite indicators.
► We conduct an empirical analysis that illustrates how these tools can be used in practice.