Today, tourism—in its residential, seasonal and experiential forms—is a territorial shaping force that produces land-use patterns, economies and conflicts. In the context of the Atlantic Area, the development of coastal and blue tourism has exacerbated issues such as overtourism, blue gentrification, the privatisation of access to the sea and the artificialisation of beaches and waterfronts. This has altered both ecological balances and social and cultural dynamics.

Concurrently, alternative maritime tourism experiences are emerging, including fishing tourism, marine tourism, vibrant ports, cultural maritime routes, and activities associated with maritime fishing heritage. These approaches offer models that have a lower environmental impact, greater territorial integration and the potential to strengthen local economies based on sustainability, identity and the common good. A comparative analysis of successful cases is essential for identifying the conditions, limitations, and potential of these approaches.

We propose approaching the coastline as a complex cultural landscape, shaped historically by the interaction of social, economic, and ecological dynamics and currently subject to overlapping pressures. In this context, tourism acts as a technology for designing the territory, resulting in infrastructure and spatial devices such as seafront promenades, marinas, second homes, urban regeneration projects, and scenographic rehabilitations of the waterfront. These changes alter both local social ecologies and the physical morphology of the coast, affecting pre-existing uses, meanings, and balances.

From this perspective, the following key questions arise: how can coastal tourism be evaluated, planned and projected based on integrated criteria such as carrying capacity, coastal justice, territorial equity and climate resilience? What alternative models emerge when blue economies are considered? Which success stories can we use to identify alternative models of nautical fishing tourism that can reconcile tourism activity with maintaining local economies linked to the sea and preserving maritime fishing heritage?