El Pico De La Ola El turismo del surf en Santa Catalina (1970- 2020): desde un pueblo pesquero a un paraíso surfista

Abstract

This is a casestudy that investigates the impact of the surf tourism in the village of Santa Catalina, Panamá. It puts the impacts of the surf tourism in a broader context of the significant changes that have taken place in Santa Catalina from 1970 to 2020 as well as in a context of the development of surf tourism and ecotourism in general. The primary source material is qualitative interviews of surfers, both locals and tourists from an extended period fieldwork in the local village, from October 2018 until March 2019. The finding tells us that there have been 3 major changes that have had an impact on the village, which have directly affected the local resources. The finding also tells us that there is a difference in how tourist and local surfers relate to the tourist development issues, where the local surfers seem to be less conscious regarding sustainable tourist development. Investigating how surfers relate to economic aspects of tourism, corruption, infrastructure, tourist movement, social climate, environment, localism and ecotourism I`ve found that the impact of surf tourism has not yet come to a point where we can say that it has taken a too negative impact on the local community, even though we can see clear potential challenges in the future development relating to the effects of commercial surf tourism in the local village.