Work carried out by SGM Consultores, for P&DP Tours

As tourism is a factor in the development of communities, it is very important that there are participatory planning initiatives, promoting actions and projects that are tailored to local realities.

Tourist activity, in most cases, is basically based on the cultural, gastronomic, events, adventure, rural and entertainment segments, and this makes it possible to organize tourist activities in order to have a clear direction for planning and management processes.

To this end, it was essential to define the segments and vocations of the places to be worked on, observing the main identity elements of the offer in these small nuclei. It's worth remembering that if the work proposal is commercially serious, the variable characteristics of demand were also carefully studied and taken into account. 

As culture and its manifestations play an important role in this process, it was necessary to observe cultural practices, the traditions of places, manifestations of faith, areas of interest to communities and, not least, observation is also necessary for geographical, historical, architectural, social aspects and so on.

We have traveled to many destinations, both structured and unstructured, and through the daily exercise of cultural and tourism management, we have noticed and sharpened our gaze on the infrastructure of the places and the services available, whether in food services, accommodation, access, transportation, without forgetting to look at the infrastructure of health, education, town planning, among other segments.

We've also been on the lookout for a segmented addiction, which is to insistently observe the profile of consumers who frequent the same places and environments that offer cultural and tourist practices where I am.

At the moment, we are professionally ending a cycle of structuring the great Circular Tourist Route of Raia/La Raia, which runs through the Districts of Cáceres; Castelo Branco; Salamanca, Guarda and for the last three years, my team and I have dedicated ourselves to identifying, structuring and promoting a leisure route based on aspects of culture, gastronomy, adventure tourism, but also offering diversified activities for entertainment, human promotion and even professional qualification.

I can say that these were very enjoyable periods working on structuring community-based tourism. Community-based tourism, according to MITRAUD, 2003, is "tourism carried out in natural areas, determined and controlled by local communities, which predominantly generates benefits for these peoples and for the conservation of biodiversity".

This branch of tourism also plays an important role when it sets out to contribute to sustainable local development.

Positive impacts, here and there, take a while, but suddenly they appear, very vigorously and with the indispensable contribution of stakeholders and local partnerships, which can always help to promote proposals in this direction.

Of course, this doesn't happen without the processes and understanding of the importance of valuing culture, the environment and synergy with local society, because it is through these paths that economic possibilities for communities can be established.