Fair tourism in Spain on debate: social transformation movement or emergent tourist product?

El artículo reúne, a partir de diferentes entrevistas semiestructuradas, la opinión de reconocidos especialistas españoles en turismo responsable para observar cuáles son los focos de debate actuales y las previsibles tendencias futuras de esta modalidad. En concreto se aborda la cuestión central de si el turismo responsable obedece a un movimiento social o a un nicho de mercado y qué efectos e implicaciones acerca de su gestión y comercialización derivan de cada postura. Como principal resultado se pone de manifiesto que, a pesar que coexisten ambas visiones entre los especialistas, existe un sesgo hacia la consideración del turismo responsable como movimiento social. No obstante, el reconocimiento de la existencia de un elevado potencial de atracción sobre la demanda española invita, a algunos expertos, a plantear abiertamente su comercialización como producto turístico bajo condiciones estrictas de equidad y transparencia. Finalmente se detectan retos de futuro: la proliferación de denominaciones que confunden a la demanda, el desequilibrio en la localización de los destinos, el acceso limitado a los mercados y las dificultades para consolidar los proyectos que no tienen una gestión eficiente.The article brings together, through different semiestructured interviews, the opinion of different Spanish specialists in responsible tourism to gather the focus of current discussion and foreseeable future trends of this modality. We focus on different aspects related to the production and consumption of this type of tourism extracted from a review of the recent literature on the subject. One relevant finding is that the existence of two opposed points of views (social and commercial) about the mission of responsible tourism coexist with a consensus on considering responsible tourism as a practice with high potential of attraction on the Spanish demand. The interviewed experts justify such claim because responsible tourism has a socially identifiable image that differentiate it from other tourist modalities. This can be explained according to the ability of responsible tourism to generate positive impacts on destinations, the proximity of visitors and local community, and because of the providing of experiences based in solidarity, direct observation of local social issues and the inclusion of leisure practices. On the other hand, the experts also highlight some challenges for the next future: the proliferation of denominations that confuse the demand, the existence of an imbalance in the location of responsible tourism destinations, distribution problems due to scarce access to the markets and the difficulties to consolidate the responsible tourism projects that do not have an efficient management