Excursionismo turistificador: impacto en el comercio del centro histórico de Guimarães (Portugal)

Abstract

The Guimarães city is home to one of the most beautiful historic centers in all of Portugal. Its preserved medieval layout, along with the recent addition in 2024 of the Couros Zone (a preindustrial leather treatment area), has earned it the distinction of being a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001. As is the case with any historic center in a European city, tourism has increasingly become part of the city’s daily life, to the point where significant functional and social changes have occurred in the urban space. For this study, an inventory, cataloguing, and analysis of the tourist and commercial resources of Guimarães’ historic center have been carried out, resulting in a quantitative analysis reinforced by qualitative methods to explain the decline in local commercial services. This situation, along with the challenges posed by day-trippers (tourists who do not stay overnight), has led local authorities to develop certain policies that may either support or harm the interests of residents.