Political economy and the emergence of a hybrid mode of governance of tourism planning

Private over Public Interests in Regional Tourism Governance: A Case Study in Costalegre, Mexico

Since the 1940s, the Costalegre, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, has been recognized as having a high potential for tourism. The aim of this paper is to understand tourism governance in a place where past and emergent luxury tourism co-exists with small-scale tourism in a largely rural and ecologically important landscape. We conducted in-depth interviews with 29 different stakeholders and administered a questionnaire survey to 27 tourist establishment owners and employees. We also held a workshop with 11 families from three rural communities and administered another questionnaire to a further 125 people from the same localities. Policy document analysis and participant observation completed the research. We found there to be strong discrepancies between the federal government’s legal framework for tourism development and local views and attributes for action. Owners and new investors in luxury tourism developments are well organized and have the economic and political power to obtain authorization for their projects, even in cases where the projects have received negative assessments from environmental scientists. We discuss how an ineffective local governance mode enables the wealthy part of the private sector to prevail, jeopardizing the construction of a regional strategy that is socially just and takes into account the needs of local residents.