Towards Sustainable Tourism Development in a Small Protected Area: Mapping Stakeholders’ Perceptions in the Alvão Natural Park, Portugal

ABSTRACTThe Alvão Natural Park (PNAL) is the smallest natural park in Portugal. The PNAL is currently in the process of implementing its co-management model, abandoning the old centralized top-down model, and aiming for a more sustainable development of the protected area. Recognizing the key role of stakeholders in sustainable tourism development in protected areas, this study examines how PNAL stakeholders perceive various topics related to sustainable tourism and local development. To this end, 19 PNAL stakeholders participated in two focus groups that were conducted to collect the primary data. NVivo software was used for content analysis and mapping stakeholders’ perceptions. The results indicate that even though the stakeholders believe that the protected area has great tourism potential and that the park’s residents are open to tourism, public authority conflicts and the lack of infrastructure and services to support tourism present obstacles to a sustainable tourism development.KEYWORDS: Sustainable tourismprotected areasstakeholders’ perceptionslocal developmentfocus groupAlvão Natural Park Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by European Funds of the FEDER Norte2020, Portugal 2020, within project «NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000079», and by National Funds of the FCT – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology within the projects «UIDB/03182/2020» and «UID/ECO/03182/2019».