The Centre for Tourism Studies and Research (Cetur), in collaboration with the Institute for Studies and Development of Galicia (Idega), both part of the University of Santiago de Compostela, presented awards for the best Bachelor's and Master's theses in the field of tourism at the Museum of Pilgrimages and Santiago.
The recipients for the 2023-24 academic year from the Ourense campus are Miguel Peña, Iago Barreiro, and Santiago Pérez, who focused on the potential of oleotourism in Galicia and the thermal tourism of Ourense.
This initiative aims to recognise university 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 Bachelor's thesis was given to Miguel Peña for his work titled The potential of oleotourism in Galicia, presented in the Joint Programme of the Degree in Tourism and Geography and History at the University of Vigo. Additionally, 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 Degree in Business Administration and Management at the Faculty of Business Sciences and Tourism of the Ourense campus.
For the 2024-25 academic year, the best Bachelor's thesis was awarded to Laura Prego for Opportunities for Blue Tourism in Arteijo: Maritime Heritage, Surfing, and Sustainability, presented in the Degree in Tourism at the University of A Coruña. The best Master's thesis was awarded to Cristina Huertas for her project Proposal for a chatbot to disseminate the documentary heritage of the Codex Calixtinus through AI, developed in the Master's programme in Digital Cultural Heritage at the USC.
Judging panel
The jury comprised Lucrezia López, director of Cetur; Iván Meléndez, director of Competitiveness of Tourism in Galicia; and Xosé Manuel Cao, head of the Service for Culture, Tourism, and Language Promotion of the Lugo City Council, representing the Centre Council. Also on the panel were 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, representing the Scientific Committee of Cetur.
This initiative by Cetur and Idega aims to promote and highlight academic research on tourism, fostering dialogue between the university and various stakeholders in the sector. Furthermore, the awards seek to consolidate and project one of the Institute's research lines, focused on studying tourism and its relationship with 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.
