Productive identities and community conditions for rural tourism in Mexican tropical drylands

The presence of distinctive territories and identities are important assets for rural tourism in addition to favorable internal conditions in host communities to reach a governance tourism model. In Mexico, several rural tourism initiatives have shown weaknesses in the outcomes such as the emergence of new conflicts in host communities, an incorrect inversion in infrastructure or deficient local organizational capabilities. This indicates the need of previous understanding in target territories where rural tourism wants to be introduced. A geographical approach based on concepts such as identity, territory, land cover and multi-scale provides an ex-ante assessment in rural spaces of tropical dry lands in Mexico where rural tourism initiatives want to be encouraged. The ex-ante assessment allowed the identification of five productive identities clearly defined from an inside perspective which revealed a high countryside capital in the studied area. In the productive identities areas, different types of tourism and activities could be developed based on the specificities found. Furthermore, heterogeneous internal conditions in communities into the entire territory were found, which has implications for the creation of horizontal collaborative networks among communities. The results offered new evidence about the potentiality of the whole territory as well as the need of further intervention and analysis to strengthen the social capital in local communities. This geographical approach to guide an ex-ante assessment is complementary to other conventional approaches for recognizing the feasibility of rural tourism initiatives or policies in rural territories.