Tourism Planning and Perceived Impacts on the Island of Boa Vista, Cape Verde

Abstract

In search of a sustainable development model, Cape Verde saw on mass tourism the answer to escape their precariousness and potentiate its morphological and climatic characteristics. Among the islands chosen for the implementation of this plan is Boa Vista, an island that has historically been synonymous with national periphery and primary subsistence production. In the last two decades this island has been a privileged stage for the implementation of centralized tourist planning by various governments. A planning based on mass-beach tourism in service of European tourists. This paper presents the perceptions of residents of the island community on the positive and negative impacts promoted by this tourism. These perceptions were collected by applying semi-structured interviews and seek to help determine whether tourism, planned from the center, has helped to address the precarious and needs of Boa Vista, Cape Verde and the goals. Among the results we underline the econmic impacts on the positive side, and social impacts on the negative side.