Introduction
In recent decades, the neoliberal mentality has been spreading in governments and large corporations in developing countries (Seligman and Slobodian, 2020). Neoliberal practices have generated growth and increasing demand based on the promotion of free trade, combined with high global unemployment and the generation of unbalanced wealth (Whelan et al., 2009). Such socioeconomic inequality has reduced the public policies by privatizing state-owned companies and reducing the financing of public services (Allen et al., 2012). These factors have helped weaken governments’ abilities to regulate actions in the public interest (Crotty et al., 1997).
From the liberalist framework, the market must be neutral without affecting the socioec onomic sphere of each citizen, with a deregulating state even in extreme situations such as natural disasters, pandemic crisis, etc. (Harvey, 2005). Under this ideological system, the state must eliminate any intervention in society (Stepney, 2013). Hence, that intervention implies the annihilation of the social protection consciousness (von Sommaruga Howard, 2016), the reduction of social welfare programs and cooperation networks to protect public goods.
Perhaps no service has currently been threatened as significantly as tourism. As Sharma and et al., (2021) has conveyed, millions of jobs in the tourism sector have been put at risk as well as the environmental impact which can be translated in a reduction of touristic activities (Sharma, et al., (2021a). Accordingly, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO 2020) has claimed that nobody predicted that the pandemic would affect tourism so directly. Moreover, not only it was not on the agenda on previous meetings, but also few of the participants predicted that the tourism sector would be one of the main industries affected (Moreno-Luna et al., 2021).
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments, travel agencies and the media and professionals have warned of the contagious risks of the virus in an interconnected world. However, these warnings were not followed in Spain. As a result, it became the second country to have the most cases at one point (Moreno-Luna et al., 2021). Nevertheless, after closing its borders and making repeated announcements to “stay at home,” the disease appears to have been tackled. Close collaboration between the public and private sectors, as a sustainable model, can be replicated from the health sector to other domains, such as tourism.
This investigation aims to transfer this model to the tourism sector through a case study of the tourist areas most seriously devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, the following objectives are highlighted as follows: 1.) to establish guidance for the tourist authority to tackle the COVID-19 effects by testing a participatory model among the tour- ist sector. 2.) According to the first objective, the second proposes to set up touristic indica- tors based on improving the touristic governance due to COVID-19 pandemic crisis. That governance is based on enhancing; the safety measures, commitment of tourist authorities, empowering communities, protection of common resources. 3.) To spread a high cooperative awareness, mutual trust and shared objectives among the local tourist industry as a way to tackle the liberalism mindset that leads the individual interest and personal gain.
Due to the relevance of the tourism sector, which represents 14% of Spain’s gross domes- tic product (GDP) (Moreno-Luna et al., 2021), the investigation reflects on way of transferring its health model’s positive effects to the Spanish tourism sector, specifically in the southwestern region of Sierra de Gata. A model of tourism governance was tested in two focus groups during May and June 2020. Based on the literature into models of cooperation between the public and private sectors, seventeen variables were discussed online with 29 companies through two focus groups. As a result of these interactive sessions, all the variables were modified according to the particularities of the tourist destination.
Following this introductory Sect. (1), the structure of this work is divided into four sections: (2) Material and Methods, where public cooperation models are proposed based on the health governance model derived from the pandemic crisis. A case study site is pro- posed on the border between Spain and Portugal; (3) Results, obtained from the application of partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) extracted from the companies’ involvement; (4) Discussion based on 25 in-depth interviews and (5) the Conclusions drawn from the Results.
