Coyuntura, retos, oportunidades y estrategias para el desarrollo de un producto turístico cultural en Mexicola ruta Don Vasco en Michoacán

Resum

In recent decades, numerous tourist products have added new places for traveler’s visit, like a new complementary option to add the already consolidated tourist destinations. Widening expectations to encourage the social and economic development of places that have great natural and cultural resources. Such is the case of Michoacan (Mexico) that holds exceptional cultural wealth, result of its prehispanic background and the process of race fusion that took place during the evangelization period that was leaded by humanist Vasco de Quiroga, in the XVI century. Precisely, this character and the heritage that was created in his time in the region so- called Zona Lacustre de Patzcuaro, constitute an opportunity to encourage and develop an important program of emergent cultural tourism, called “Don Vasco ́s Route”. The conceptual project was presented in year 2011, in FITUR (Spain), winning the Best International touristic product prize. Five years after winning this prize, even though there have been big investments the route hasn ́t manage to fully operate and develop to serve the goals set at the beginning, not can we identify significant impacts in the area ́s local economy or a better cultural heritage preservation; premises that were part of the mainstay of its conceptualization and legitimacy. This contribution intends to objectively assess the current juncture of the route, to identify the challenges for its touristic management, to evaluate the touristic functionality of the main patrimonial icons and to set guidelines to start a strategy of sustainable cultural and religious tourism. This work is a methodological study case, which analyzes a touristic territory whose rich heritage gives it the character of tourist region.