Hiking, walking festivals and nature tourism. The example of the Pampilhosa da Serra Walking Weekend

Abstract

Inside leisure activities and nature tourism, hiking is one of the main practices worldwide, enjoying great popularity and growing - as an example, remember that the Alps alone have around 10 million hikers per year - contributing to the effect, the fact that it is a low-cost activity for the practitioner, undemanding in physical terms, being able to be practiced by a wide social and generational spectrum, allowing an intense contact with the territories and the experience of experiences of great symbolic value. Walking festivals are among the ways of enhancing walking trails, contributing to the animation of the local economic structure, territorial promotion and its ecocultural resources, reducing the effect of seasonality and increasing the interaction between tourists and residents. Inserted in structured programs, with two or more days of continuous and immersive activities in the territories, they have grown over the last few years, as is the case of the Pampilhosa da Serra Walking Weekend, one of the largest national events with the most continuous editions in Portugal, to which we dedicate this exploratory analysis.