Summary:
This research deals with the evolution of the tourism development process and community participation as promoter of cultural offerings for tourism purposes in the international, national and particularizing field in Viñales; under the title: the foundation of community participation in the promotion of cultural offers for tourism purposes in the "Viñales" People's Council.
Where the need to form sufficiently leading communities that are capable of inserting themselves in the promotion of their heritage is revealed, starting from the non-involvement of the residents of the Viñales Popular Council in the process of tourist development, thus affecting the promotion of values essential to its cultural heritage, which is why we propose a training program aimed at members of the community, culture workers and members of tourist facilities.
Its design and implementation will contribute to raising the community's knowledge of its cultural heritage, as well as the use that can be made of cultural heritage with tourist attractions, in addition to the important role that the host community plays in tourism development. The proposed program can be used as a link between hotel facilities, cultural institutions and the Viñales community as a fundamental way of exposing the best of our culture to tourists.
Introduction
Tourism, from the past decade, has shown significant growth in the Caribbean and the influx of tourists to the region makes Cuba one of the strongest tourist destinations in the area. Such preference is due to the geographical position, its natural resources, the social psychology of its inhabitants, the culture of its towns, the beauty of its landscape, its climate, its undisturbed environment, its hospitality. from his town; qualities that go hand in hand with education, and therefore are capable of captivating the most demanding traveler.
Tourism as a social phenomenon transforms its bases from expectative tourism to participatory tourism, which is to say, that as the tourist changes his position from a simple spectator to an active participant in the tourist experience, he achieves a greater satisfaction of his purposes., that at the moment are given by the need to acquire new knowledge, and to achieve a more direct relationship with the community (fundamental basis of expression of Cuban culture).
The community is the physical space that gives rise to the formation of culture through the conformation of an identity, a paradigm of values and interests and traditions.
It is made up of a human group that prints individual and interdependent preferences, based on a collective identity and very varied expectations. That is why each one is endowed with a unique cultural heritage and that has certain attractions that can be used as a tourist offer.
In order to use the resources available to the community, in order to offer them to tourists, it is necessary to take into account the willingness of the inhabitants to carry out this exchange. Therefore, establishing a close link between tourism-community-culture is a priority.
The tourist offerings based on the culture of the communities is an emergency in today's world, due to the need to strengthen and rescue our culture. For which it is essential to have the full support of the members of the communities, so they must give it a leading role in actions in which they in turn are directly involved.
Achieving the active participation of the communities is a process that becomes difficult, the communities need to understand the reason why they must be precisely those who have to be clear that their cultural heritage is what provides tourist attractions and therefore your care and protection are needed.
Even though today there are community leaders, educators and cultural promoters who have the mission of guiding the community, it is still necessary to create in the inhabitants a desire and a need to rescue and protect the cultural heritage of their community. For which we must plot actions aimed at fulfilling such purposes.
Strengthening culture and tourism is a priority for which no effort is spared, but even so, there are difficulties, mainly in making tourist offerings aimed at developing both sectors.
Pinar del Río is proposed to be the Cathedral of Nature Tourism in the future. It is a province that enjoys impressive landscapes, unique nature reserves, has a large number of endemic and endangered plants and animals.
At the moment our province is directing its offers to develop a strong enough nature tourism. All the tourist products are aimed at showing the marvelous and extraordinary of the landscapes of Pinar del Río, although it is necessary to work to perfect and increase them, because our visitors are not satisfied with just hiking, horseback riding or hiking, which are the main offers of the regions that develop Nature Tourism.
To achieve the expansion of the province's tourism product, a group of investigations are carried out aimed at developing community participation strategies that reveal the cultural potential of the communities that can enrich the offerings of the different chains and tourist facilities.
We intend to develop attractive offers from a natural and cultural point of view, based on the cultural development of the communities that are involved in the natural heritage management process.
Many are the communities in which nature tourism is developed that is limited only to offering the landscape, flora and fauna, without realizing how attractive it is to carry out natural proposals accompanied by indigenous culture of the communities involved.
The Viñales community is a strong exponent of nature tourism, due to the beauty of its valley, the presence of the Viñales National Park, the diversity of flora and fauna, in addition to presenting a high degree of endemism. These beauties are unrivaled attractions, but they would be even greater if they were carried out on a par with offers taking into account the cultural heritage of the communities involved, in addition to taking into account their cultural roots, as well as the level of promotion and preservation of their culture.
This town has great cultural attractions that until now have not been fully exploited by institutions or tourist facilities, making it impossible for a cultural exchange between the tourist and its inhabitants.
For this reason, I consider as a problem to be solved in the present investigation:
Research Problem:
The residents of the "Viñales" People's Council are not involved in the tourist development process in their region, which affects the promotion of the essential values of their cultural heritage.
Background and current status of the subject.
The topicality of the subject goes beyond the territorial and national framework.
The development of a relationship between culture and tourism is marked on a global scale by the growth and changes foreseeable for this century, which influence the breakdown of traditional paradigms of tourism management, since the imprint of new tourist offerings does not they are alien to the preservation and development of cultural heritage.
If it is intended to develop a tourism of health, peace and tranquility, it is necessary to keep in mind what the different theories are, regarding the relationship of cultural heritage and tourism, from the same expression of interculturality, miscegenation, traditions, customs, myths, legends, musical wealth, linguistics, historical roots, idiosyncratic elements that identify the region, historical roots, artistic exponents as a way of insertion in the expectations of the tourist.
The community has become a key scenario in the resistance strategy and, at the same time, in the development of the country in terms of guarantee and continuity of the Cuban social project as a concrete expression from within the broad spectrum of participatory and protagonist formulas. However, in the specific case of tourism, it is where fewer experiences and theoretical reflections are had regarding community participation and even less how it benefits from it.
That is why within the expectations of this project the leading role of the local community is conceived, its participation in decision-making and profits from profits, which is a guarantee for the identity and sense of belonging to the project, as well as achieving A close link between all the entities involved in this process, for which we aim to:
To base the particularities of community participation in the promotion of cultural offers for tourism purposes in the Viñales People's Council, which allows designing a methodological proposal for a training program to contribute to the formation of the community as a true promoter.
Specific objectives:
To base the relationship between culture _community_ heritage
Diagnosis of the potential of the cultural heritage that each tourist region has since its report on labor practice, as well as its investigative work.
Verify in practice the existing situation in the Viñales Tourist Region.
Design of a training program aimed at the people of Viñales, managers of culture and tourist facilities. The tourist culture and the particularities of tourism linked to the community is a dynamic process, but above all a creative one, where tourists and residents find themselves, in this process of identity and creativity.
Community and project are two terms that have been present in Cuba since the 90s, the community has become a key scenario in the resistance strategy and at the same time the guarantee and continuity of the Cuban social project, as a concrete expression within the broad spectrum of participatory formulas.
In the case of tourism, it is where fewer experiences and theoretical reflections exist, regarding their participation in the community, and even less as a beneficiary of it.
Within the expectations of this work, the role of the local community is conceived, its participation with decision-making power and the benefit of profits, which is a guarantee of the identity and sense of belonging to the project and its responsibility in it, seen this as instrumental links between specialists of the transformative proposals and changes that occur in the community.
For this, it is essential to include some learnings that have been leaving some experiences in other projects such as the Eusebio Leal Project in Old Havana, Las Terrazas Tourist Complex, Baconao Park, etc.
Community participation and action as a process focused on people - local population - tourists, requires that the former play a leading role in the transformation - conservation of their local environment, based on their knowledge, identity and values.
Culture and local identity are essential factors in the approach a community takes towards its development. That is why the levels of articulation and organization of the social body, the degree of attachment to traditions, the ease and difficulty of social coexistence, the acceptance or rejection of new projects or proposals are developed in the community, the evolution of the codes and ethical values that these can generate, people as reactive elements that slow down or enhance community actions and the projects they carry out.
Proposal for a training program aimed at culture workers, leaders of tourist facilities and residents of the Popular Council.
The program will be carried out through reflection and debate workshops, which are distributed as follows:
Topic1: Cultural heritage and its importance for tourism. Specifying the current situation of Viñales.
Topic2: Current tourist activities.
Topic 3: The community and its close relationship with tourism. Its role in tourism development.
Topic 4: Community participation techniques to ensure that the community becomes the promoter of cultural offerings.
Each workshop will have an action, an objective and will be developed jointly between the residents, the leaders of the tourist facilities and culture workers; It will also have a specialist in the topics to be discussed.
In each session, the workshops will carry out a group of activities that will be mostly initiated by motivational and participatory techniques, which will contribute to a better performance of the activity that is carried out, as well as techniques to measure satisfaction and knowledge acquired by the participants.
Each of the participants will have the opportunity to measure and question their own knowledge about the culture of their region and will deepen their knowledge of their cultural heritage.
To a great extent, the execution of this program will contribute to increasing the knowledge of the leaders of the tourist facilities that will be able to put it into practice in the planning of cultural animation programs, which will directly influence the information that the tourist will be able to acquire upon reaching each installation.
In the culture workers it will serve as a consolidation of the knowledge already obtained through their daily work and will influence the development of future cultural activities.
A program that aims to deepen the knowledge about the culture and heritage of a certain place and with greater importance if it is a tourist region like Viñales, we cannot leave aside the residents who are the main carriers of this wealth cultural, and are in charge of relating directly to the tourist, in addition to when we arrive in another country the most efficient way is to learn about the culture of the population itself that has lived through the entire cultural process.
Conclusions
The work presented is part of a territorial project of local development approved by the Institute of Science, Technology and Environment in which various institutions converge, but with the interest of meeting the same objective, promoting an improvement in the quality of life of the inhabitants of the communities, where the student of Sociocultural studies is perfectly inserted for providing from their professional training process the potentialities and essential requirements for the performance of a comprehensive study of the communities, thus complying with Law No. 1 of didactic science, the University-Society relationship.
The possibility of perfecting the tourism product from the potential of the community's socio-cultural heritage, positively affects the level of stay of the tourist in the facility, and encourages community intervention in the process of preserving their culture, identity and sense of belonging. To the region, for this reason, it is considered feasible to improve the curricular design of the Sociocultural Studies Career, in its investigative work component, for the contributions that in the design of the integral tourist product of the Pinar Río province, they can offer from your academic reference.
Community participation in the process of tourist development in the Viñales community favors the enrichment of its cultural formation and constitutes a source of promotion of the heritage values of the region.
Bibliography
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Annexed
| Workshop | Themes | Actions | Addressed to | Number of hours |
| one | Evolution of cultural heritage and its importance for Tourism. | Discussion and debate about cultural heritage. Study of the tourist potential of Viñales through printed and documentary documents on the subject in the region. | Culture, tourism and population workers. | two |
| two | The cultural heritage in Viñales and its importance for today's tourist. | Discussion on current tourist activities | Culture, tourism and population workers | two |
| 3 | Current tourist activities and their link with heritage. | Debate on the role of the community in tourism development. | Culture, tourism and population workers | 4 |
| 4 | Community participation in promoting cultural offerings. | Summary of the previous topics. Together, develop cultural animation programs for tourists. | Culture, tourism and population workers | 4 |
