From training to administration from integrated environmental management: Elguea Hot Spring Case

Abstract

The Elguea hot springs in the municipality of Corralillo, flagship product of wellness tourism in Villa Clara province, implements an improvement program for its recovery, with the imperative of considering the recovery of its environment strongly affected by climate change. The present study assumes as objective: to argue the importance of Integrated Environmental Management, from environmental training, resulting in the management for the gradual recovery of the environment of the Elguea hotel during the investment process, as an expression of sustainable tourism development from the local. The systematization of the experience is assumed as a methodological strategy. The Integrated Environmental Management workshops, as a novel experience distinguished as a Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (CITMA) Award for research and novelty of management by the national press, have been implemented as educational spaces and for the coordination of the actions of the territorial actors that have been summoned to accompany the tourism sector, in the province in the recovery of the environment, as an added value to the capital investment made in the Hotel. Training in Environmental Education for Sustainable Development, Integrated Environmental Management, Environmental Management and Local Development are merged in these spaces, whose positive balance begins to be appreciated through the improvement of environmental indicators that demonstrate, from science, that doing can overcome to the speech in the achievement of the sustainability of the investment and of the operation in a privileged place for the benefits of nature in view of the upcoming celebration of the V Integrated Environmental Management Workshop.