Tourism-related activities have become a central element of the economic dynamism of the Old Town of La Laguna. The figures prior to the COVID-19 pandemic show us a destination that in recent years exceeded one million visitors per year, but with low numbers of overnight tourists. With its declaration as a World Heritage City by UNESCO in 1999, La Laguna embarked on a path of specialising its urban centre for tourism, which can be considered a success in light of these figures but which, for that very reason, has given rise or may give rise to various problems that will not be solved without decisive intervention by the municipal authorities.
Experience gained in heritage tourist destinations makes it clear that, even in the most successful cases, there are risks and costs associated with tourism development: overcrowding, low social profitability, incompatibility between tourist and residential uses of space, increased costs of housing, commercial spaces and the cost of living, deterioration and decontextualisation of built heritage. This document contains a summary of the Master Plans for the Old Town of La Laguna and the North-East Region, which propose a series of actions aimed at reorienting tourism in the municipality.
This proposal has been drawn up by the research team of the ULL Tourism Chair participating in the La Laguna Tourism Strategy research project. Diagnosis and action plans, based on an in-depth analysis of the data and information available on tourism in Casco and the north-eastern region, and the participation of a wide variety of stakeholders in the sector. This publication is an extract from two comprehensive and detailed working documents, summarising the main strategic lines. For reasons of length, the diagnoses, the criteria for collecting proposals and selecting actions for both master plans, as well as the annexes with the estimated number of visitors, the study on the factors that influence visits to the historic centre, the descriptive analysis of visitor comments, the inventory and evaluation of resources in the Northeast Region, information on the participatory phase of the work, the list of information provided in electronic format, and the list of ethnographic and archaeological resources in the Northeast Region.
The complete documents, as well as the annexes, plans, and graphs, are available for consultation below:
