Predictive Modelling for Sustainable Pilgrim Flow Management on the Camino de Santiago

When destinations are in a growth or maturity phase, two simultaneous debates usually arise: is there overtourism? and ‑if it exists‑ does it have negative consequences? The literature has been concerned with providing scientific answers to these questions analysing cases of urban and sun and sand d...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Atrio Lema, Yago, Neira Gómez, Isabel, Río Araújo, María Luisa del
Format: article
Publication Date:2025
Country:España
Institution:Universidad de Santiago de Compostela (USC)
Repository:Minerva. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:minerva.usc.gal:10347/41655
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10347/41655
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Overtourism
Predictive models
Management
El Camino de Santiago
Sobreturismo
Modelos predictivos
Gestión
Camino de Santiago
Description
Summary:When destinations are in a growth or maturity phase, two simultaneous debates usually arise: is there overtourism? and ‑if it exists‑ does it have negative consequences? The literature has been concerned with providing scientific answers to these questions analysing cases of urban and sun and sand destinations. The differential elements of rural destinations in relation to this topic have usually been neglected. This study presents a prediction instrument built specifically for a growing destination located ‑ almost entirely ‑ in a rural environment: El Camino de Santiago. Based on the information collected over the last 20 years by the Pilgrim’s Welcome Office receiving more than 4 million pilgrims, this instrument is aimed at predicting the number of pilgrims who will pass through a series of hotspots ‑employing Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA), and Trigonometric seasonality, Box‑Cox transformation, ARMA errors, Trend and Seasonal Components (TBATS) models‑ to help control management of pilgrim flows and thus counteract the possible negative consequences of overtourism, optimising the experience for tourists, business owners, and residents of the hotspots