RELATIONAL DYNAMIC IN MAGICAL TOWNS OF MEXICO. STUDY OF THE IMPLICATIONS OF TOURISM POLICY BASED ON SOCIAL NETWORKS ANALYSIS

Launched in 2001, the program Pueblos Magicos de Mexico has sought to be an instrument to develop tourist activity in small towns in the country that have attractions that can be used for tourism. One of the requirements for the incorporation of destinations is the conformation of a committee that brings together representatives of the public and private sectors, which should be an interlocutor between the levels of government and the local population, as well as a consultation and Analysis of the projects to be developed, simultaneously achieving the empowerment of local actors and an improvement in the management of the destination. However, the creation of these committees did not in all cases have considered the preexisting social fabric and this has resulted in a series of problems in the destinations. Through the implementation of network analysis, this work analyzes the relational dynamics in one of the destinations included in this program and the impacts it has generated, proving the effectiveness of the tool for understanding tourism in emerging destinations, in addition to its usefulness for the generation of proposals of improvement of the public policy in the impulse to the tourism in small localities.