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Abstract
This paper examines the qualitative, quantitative, and geographical evolution (1987–2012) of the Blue Flag campaign and accreditation process in Spain, a leading coastal tourism destination heading the list of awards. The standard Blue Flag criteria for crowded, developed beaches are now adapting to new demands for natural beaches, but they still fail to capture essential sustainable tourism features, such as limiting user numbers, or preserving and restoring sand ecosystems. Given these shortcomings, some destinations are moving to alternative awards with a higher environmental commitment, such as EMS, ISO14001, and Eco-Management and Audit Schemes (EMAS). A cluster analysis of Blue Flag data for 983 beaches in Spain over 26 years revealed different behaviour patterns: established tourist areas that have always opted for the Blue Flag programme; tourist areas that adopted the Blue Flag early on but replaced it with ISO14001 and EMAS; recently developed destinations applying for the award to boost their tourism promotion; and tourist areas with no well-defined policy that have opted intermittently for Blue Flag. These profiles illustrate the different policies of Spain's Autonomous Regions, and they are useful for tourism managers to verify whether their destination's behaviour pattern contributes to sustainable tourism and matches strategic policies they have designed for them.
经过超过25年对海滩的评审，蓝旗是否已经推动可持续管理？
本文探讨了在西班牙，一个滨海旅游地奖项领头公司——蓝旗的定性，定量和地理演化（1987-2012）评审过程。针对拥挤和成熟的海滩，蓝旗标准现在适应了自然海滩新的要求，但他们仍然没有捕捉到重要的可持续旅游特点，如限制用户数量，或保存和恢复沙生态系统。鉴于这些缺点，某些目的地正移至其他具有较高环保承诺的奖项，如EMS，ISO14001和EMAS。蓝旗对西班牙超过26年的983处海滩的数据的聚类分析体现了不同的行为模式：即始终选择蓝旗计划建立的旅游区;早期采用蓝旗但后来被ISO14001和EMAS所取而代之的旅游区；最近开发的、申请奖励以提高旅游促销的旅游区；以及没有明确选择策略但不定期选择蓝旗的旅游区。这些配置文件说明了西班牙自治区的不同政策，以及这对旅游管理人员很有用，得以验证他们的目的地的行为模式是否有助于可持续旅游业，并为他们匹配战略政策。
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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Notes on contributors
Rosa M. Fraguell
Rosa M. Fraguell is a senior lecturer at the Department of Geography and a research fellow of the Environment Institute at the University of Girona. She holds a PhD on tourism from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her research interest focus on sustainable tourism and the development of tourism on coastal zones, protected natural areas and rural spaces, as in Spain as in some Latin American countries. Her work has been published and presented internationally.
Carolina Martí
Carolina Martí is an associate lecturer at the Department of Geography and a research fellow of the Environment Institute at the University of Girona. She obtained a PhD on landscape from the University of Girona. Her research interests include coastal landscape changes, sustainable tourism policy, indicators and measurement. She has published several papers on coastal landscape changes in national and international journals.
Josep Pintó
Josep Pintó is a senior lecturer and researcher at the University of Girona. He holds a PhD on physical geography from the University of Barcelona. He is the head of the Landscape Laboratory. His research centres on Mediterranean landscape dynamics, mainly on coastal zones and recently on coastal dunes management, and it has been published in international journals.
Germà Coenders
Germà Coenders is associate professor at the Department of Economics, University of Girona. His research interests include tourism, statistics and survey methodology. His work has been published in Tourism Economics, Tourism Management, Tourism Analysis, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Social Indicators Research, Quality and Quantity, Sociological Methodology, Survey Research Methods and Structural Equation Modeling, among other journals.
