Diagnosis and strategies for tourist routes

Identify attractions, resources, actions and tools to improve regional tourism development in El Salvador.

Contracting from the Salvadoran Tourism Corporation (2016) to carry out a tourism and leisure activities diagnosis in three important routes in the country (Volcanoes Route, Sun and Beach Route and San Salvador Historical Center Route).

To be able to achieve this professional mission, a series of workshops were designed to raise awareness and internal reflection, analysis of secondary data, in-depth interviews, the “mystery client” technique, online surveys, classification of tourist attractions, and fieldwork in different destinations in the country. Based on this, a sustainable development strategy was generated for each route, centered on five main axes, and concrete proposals for action.

The consultancy was carried out combining work at Pax# headquarters and trips to El Salvador for the coordination of workshops, fieldwork, presentations and in-depth interviews. After the diagnostic stage, premises of sustainable development of the tourism activity itself were considered, in coherence with the efforts developed in the country, and the guidelines of the National Policy of Sustainable Tourism. For the organization of the development actions by route, five axes of intervention were considered:

1. Improvements in the competitive conditions of the environment.
2. Optimization of products and services.
3. Innovation and creation of supply.
4. Development of capacities.
5. Systematic and planned promotion.

Planning is a reflection of a country’s governance and its territories. El Salvador has a Tourism Development Committee model, which is an essential tool for improvement and empowerment for endogenous development. The improvement and refinement of these mechanisms, together with greater representativeness and cohesion of the actors, will maximize the possibilities for growth and generation of investment and employment through tourism.