Sustainable Tourism Law

SUSTAINABILITY AS A STRATEGIC VECTOR OF TOURISM 465 As a whole, the industry has been taking general and concrete measures to ration the consumption of water and energy, and it can be sensed among all agents a greater preoccupation with these matters. It is a cost reduction in the strictest of senses but it also presents good environmental practices to be considered and a way to look after our future. While recognizing the wasteful situations outlined above is justified, a word of appreciation is also due to the considerable amount of work that has already been and is being done by many players, in particular entrepreneurs in the field of designing intelligent systems of consumption, saving and reusing water, as well as generating, saving, preserving and using energy. Likewise, criticismof the abusive use of privileged locations is only partially justified, in that the few cases thatmay be pointed out are, in particular, situations which are dated and linked to the specific circumstances of the era when establishments were installed. In fact, considering the Portuguese coastline for the purposes of this analysis, cases of use of those locations by first-rate hotels are scarce and only in very particular situations can constructions be considered intrusive. On the contrary, in most cases the solutions implemented are not only worthwhile from an urban and even environmental point of view, but above all, they are far superior to the alternatives. Those would surely be translated into indiscriminate, unstructured and non-urbanized use for the installation of primary and secondary homes, if not for more undifferentiated and problematic uses, namely for the purpose of storage of materials. It should be emphasized that, from a general point of view, hotels located on the first coastline, like all others, follow an integrated concept adapted to the conditions of the location, often using a non-invasive and reversible intervention approach, so that it is not only possible to minimize its impact at present, but it is also possible to restore its former state in the future. Thus, hotels and their surroundings can be considered, and have been, one of the ways of safeguarding the “dialogue” between land and sea, as their buildings render their use compatible and they are often the best guarantee of consistency and preservation of cliffs and other habitats that would otherwise be overburdened, if not even destroyed, by less adequate use whichwould sooner or later cause them to subside. Also, only very rarely can one criticize golf for using the spaces destined for the primary sector. Indeed, it is well known how traditional activities of our economy have undergone a deep conversion and how vast geographical areas formerly devoted to agriculture, whether exclusively or partially, have been abandoned.