The Centro de Estudios e Investigacións Turísticas (Cetur), in collaboration with the Instituto de Estudos e Desenvolvemento de Galicia (Idega), both part of the University of Santiago de Compostela, presented awards for the best undergraduate and master's theses in the field of tourism at the Museo das Peregrinacións e de Santiago.
The winners for the 2023-24 academic year are Miguel Peña, Iago Barreiro, and Santiago Pérez, whose works focus on the potential of olive tourism in Galicia and the thermal tourism of Ourense.
Aims of the initiative
This initiative was established to recognise academic work conducted in Galicia that contributes to the analysis, understanding, and reflection on tourism activities, their challenges, and transformations.
Award winners
In this first edition, the award for the best undergraduate thesis (TFG) went to Miguel Peña for his work titled The potential of olive tourism in Galicia, presented as part of the Joint Programme in Tourism and Geography and History at the University of Vigo (UVigo). An honourable mention was awarded to Iago Barreiro and Santiago Pérez for their thesis Development and validation of a tool for evaluating social profitability in tourism projects: application to the Ourense thermal destination, completed in the Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration and Management at the Faculty of Business Sciences and Tourism of the Ourense campus.
For the 2024-2025 academic year, the award for the best undergraduate thesis was given to Laura Prego for her work Opportunities for Blue Tourism in Arteijo: Maritime Heritage, Surfing, and Sustainability, presented in the Bachelor’s Degree in Tourism at the University of La Coruña (UDC). The best master's thesis (TFM) was awarded to Cristina Huertas for her project Proposal for a chatbot to promote the documentary heritage of the Codex Calixtinus through AI, developed in the Master's programme in Digital Cultural Heritage at the USC.
Jury composition
The jury included Lucrezia López, director of Cetur; Iván Meléndez, director of Tourism Competitiveness in Galicia; and Xosé Manuel Cao, head of the Culture, Tourism, and Language Promotion Service of the Lugo City Council, representing the Council of the Centre. Additionally, María Milagros Vivel from the Department of Financial Economics and Accounting at USC and María de los Ángeles Piñeiro from the Department of Geography at USC represented the Scientific Committee of Cetur.
Encouraging academic research
Through this initiative, Cetur and Idega aim to promote and highlight academic research on tourism, fostering dialogue between the university and various stakeholders in the sector. The awards also seek to consolidate and enhance one of the research lines of the Institute, focused on studying tourism and its relationship with the territorial, economic, and social development processes in Galicia. “This orientation reinforces the role of tourism research as a field for generating knowledge and as a tool for understanding the challenges and opportunities that tourism presents for Galician development,” stated the organisers.
