The specific weight of tourism as an economic reality forces administrations to design adequate land planning (UNEP, 2005; Cabezas Hernández and Leal-Solís, 2021). Planning implies coordinating chosen and designed behaviors (Leal-Solís and Robina-Ramírez, 2022), and influences how tourism develops and how its benefits and impacts are distributed (McLoughlin and Hanrahan, 2021). These behaviors can be environmental, economic, legal or social (McLoughlin and Hanrahan, 2021), contributing to the character of sustainable tourism that is observed today.

Sustainability must consider a multitude of aspects of primary importance for the territory and all the interest groups involved. However, we must be aware that the lack of environmental, social and legal planning of a destination leads to problems such as the degeneration of the natural environment, traffic problems, loss of cultural identity, lack of training of workers, conflicts between local communities and tourists, loss of tourist attraction, and many others (Dredge and Jamal, 2015).

Based on the social nature of sustainability, planning also involves learning to incorporate the people who reside in the destinations in the decision-making process (Sánchez-Oro et al., 2021), involving them through their involvement in each activity, as indicated by stakeholder theory. There are more and more studies where the population is actively involved (Baum, 2015; Robina-Ramírez et al., 2020a,b, 2021a,b; Sánchez-Oro Sánchez and Robina-Ramírez, 2020; Palazzo et al., 2021; Sánchez-Oro et al., 2021; Zheng et al., 2021). Given the importance of this group, the information that comes from the population can be communicated not only through opinions and improving the disclosure of sustainability information but also through the expression of feelings. In this sense, the generation of emotions has become an efficient tool for future decisions to be made (Hoch, 2006; Devine and Devine, 2011; Baum, 2015; Ferreira, 2018; Robina-Ramírez and Pulido-Fernández, 2021; Wang, 2021; Zheng et al., 2021; Robina-Ramírez et al., 2022).

Although planning and emotions are two phenomena that feed each other (Hoch, 2006; Deitz et al., 2018), on many occasions it is assumed that the population is not trained to make judgments that contribute to organizing the environment in which they live. For this reason, there are hardly any studies that incorporate emotions in tourism planning, and even fewer that propose an exploratory model of participatory design for the planning of a territory. Given this, our research question arises: Is there an influence of emotions in improving tourism planning?

This study aims to vindicate the role that emotions play in decision making in the tourism industry. For this, the contribution of training actions is valued as a consequence of knowledge, participation and implementation of a tourism plan. These actions are designed by public and private tourism agents to encourage the desire to participate and generate emotions.

The originality and the unique value of this work are based not only on highlighting the lack of studies that introduce emotions in the tourism planning process by public administrations but in performing training activities among the private sector in order to successfully participate in the tourism plan.

Even though the literature has proposed models for the participation of the private sector in the preparation of plans. However, this participation is usually small and unstable over time. In addition, as far as our research goes, these models have left aside the measurement of the emotions of the recipients of the tourism revitalization policies of the territories as a tool to improve planning.

Moreover, there are no empirical studies that show what type of economic, environmental, social and legal indicators should be more relevant to be trained in improving the stakeholders´ emotions towards the tourism plan, as well as training processes, that have to be performed. The originality lies not only in defining those indicators from the literature review but also in implementing innovative and sustainable actions in the five sections of the II Tourism Plan approved by the Extremadura Regional Government. In an intense effort, public administration and private companies have been aligned around the new tourism plan to propose a methodology that can be replicated in other territories.

The empirical study takes place in the region of Extremadura, located in the south-west of Spain. It is a region rich in natural parks and protected areas in 92% of the territory (Gallego and Martín, 2016). The COVID-19 pandemic reduced tourism by 2% (Engelmo-Moriche et al., 2021), which has not prevented the recovery of the sector in the post-COVID era from being outstanding, reaching 12.5% of GDP, one of the highest in Spain [INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística), 2022].

In Extremadura, the main tourism planning instrument is three-year tourism plans. The II Tourism Plan of Extremadura (2021–2023) is currently in force, where the lines of work for that period are explained. Some authors have proposed models for the participation of the private sector in the preparation of plans (Ladkin and Bertramini, 2002). However, this participation is usually small and unstable over time. In addition, as far as our research goes, these models have left aside the measurement of the emotions of the recipients of the tourism revitalization policies of the territories as a tool to improve planning.

This study contributes to the literature from a triple approach: (1) analyzing how hotel managers can contribute to improving the tourism plan; (2) studying how the training given to hotel managers affects the strategic lines of the plan; and (3) providing a work tool for tourism authorities, by analyzing the disposition of private agents based on the emotions caused by knowledge and implementation of the plan. On the other hand, we contribute with qualitative and quantitative research to the study of sustainable tourism planning, which we consider a novelty of the study.

In the next section, the theoretical framework is mentioned, referring to the relationship between emotions and tourism planning as well as the economic, environmental, legal and social impacts caused by tourism decisions. The following sections describe the methodology and provide the results. A discussion, conclusion and limitations occupy the last three sections of the work.

This study is interested in the sector in which it is developed, given its contribution to the development of regions and countries. In this sense, sustainable tourism planning must be today’s objective, in order to achieve the much-desired creation of value. At the same time, the study is innovative in incorporating the emotional factor that emanates from the attitudes and actions of the agents of interest in the development of the planning of tourist activities. It is obvious that the emotions generated in said implementation have facilitated the generation of intentions to introduce improvements. In this sense, the study determines negative and positive emotions that are generated in the three phases: knowledge of the plan (1), implementation of proposals (2) and incorporation of improvements (3). The range of emotions generated at different moments of tourism planning stands out. It is observed that, as the plan is better known and shared, negative emotions (EG) are reduced (Kals and Müller, 2012; Vasilyev, 2017; Cole et al., 2021; Xiao et al., 2021) and positive ones increase EGP (Stebbins, 2018; Wang, 2021; Xiao et al., 2021). This positive turn on emotions is desired in any study on behavior, being crucial in the behavior of the final recipient (González et al., 2020; Graça Ramos et al., 2021; Kim et al., 2022) and improving the quality of the product or service provided to the customer (Table 11).

In this way, in similar territorial environments, emotions become an instrument not only at the service of tourist experiences, as the literature to date has shown (González et al., 2020), but also in tourism planning.

Planners are increasingly moving towards tourism as a viable economic and environmental development strategy for the territories, due to the ongoing restructuring of tourist destinations. On the one hand, in emerging tourist destinations, residents are exposed to low tourism rates, as would be the case in Spain in Extremadura, while in mature destinations the volume of tourists poses a severe risk to the lifestyle and well-being of residents. as would be the case of Spanish destinations such as the Costa del Sol, Costa Brava, Mallorca, Ibiza, or the Canary Islands. The challenge for planners in both cases is to develop a high degree of awareness of the public perception of tourism to attract the cooperation of local residents in local tourism initiatives (Lindblom et al., 2020). Planning the knowledge of emotions among hosts influences their attitudes toward dealing with guests. Previous empirical studies in the International Tagus Natural Park located within the region of Extremadura (Spain) have justified the importance of dealing with host and guest emotions in tourism planning. This host-guest relationship not only generates the tourist experience but develops reciprocal host-guest attitudes (Robina-Ramírez et al., 2020a,b). As a result, careful planning of the tourism providers´ activity help them to empathize with tourists by creating emotional bonds through developing host-guest contact points (Volo, 2017).

Those emotional bonds are analysed in the Andean community of Taquile Island (Peru) by delving into the importance of community integration planning in tourism connected to improving residents’ feelings towards tourists. By empowering locals to make decisions on socio-economic issues, residents improved their feelings towards tourists and the destination in general (Mitchell and Reid, 2001). Similarly, Hasani et al. (2016) studied the effect of incorporating emotions in tourism planning referring to the study carried out among residents in rural areas of Malaysia. The result was the incorporation of training actions among locals to improve empathy, behavior, and understanding through a project called emotional solidarity towards tourists.

Starting from the role that emotions play in the planning of tourist destinations (Sundaresan and John, 2020), the study confirms that planning and emotions are two phenomena that feed each other (Hoch, 2006; Deitz et al., 2018). The results help to overcome the uncertainties caused by currents of thought that consider that the population is not qualified to make judgments about the environment in which they live (Sánchez-Oro et al., 2021), reinforcing the influence of interest groups on the behaviour of organizations.

The study allows us to extract numerous implications, both theoretical and practical.

The importance of a longitudinal study around sustainable tourism planning is greater now that the uncertainty of social facts is evident. According to the results, the training activities organized by the research team served to improve the willingness to participate in the II Extremadura Tourism Plan (2021–2023). The study confirms that the variation of constructs from 2021 to 2022 was significant in all cases. At the same time, it is shown that all the defined indicators were accepted as valid and reliable (λ ≥ 0.7). This shows that the development of infrastructures and digitization of services in the territory—improving environmental quality, defining models of public–private collaboration and reducing bureaucracy—have been key to the implementation and improvement of the plan among hotel managers throughout the three phases of the longitudinal study.

All the working hypotheses were shown to be significant. Especially strong are the relations between the variables of H1 (PD-1st Phase → EG, 1st Phase) and H4 (PD-2nd Phase → EG, 2nd Phase), H5 (PD-2nd Phase → PD-3rd Phase) and H6 (EP, 2nd Phase → EP-3rd Phase). This shows that, at the beginning of the investigation, the detailed explanation of the tourism plan generated emotions, in this case positive, among the hotel managers (H1), as happened in the process of implementing said plan (H4). The willingness to implement the project motivated the willingness to incorporate H5 improvements (DP-2nd Phase → DP-3rd Phase).

As the research progressed, the willingness of hotel managers improved. That is, the exogenous variables contributed with a greater explanatory capacity to the endogenous variable (R2-DP2 = 0.029, R2-DP3 = 0.397), as well as the perception of emotions (R2-EG1 = 0.395, R2-EG2 = 0.505, R2-EG3 = 0.517). According to Cohen (1998), the predictive capacity of the model must be >0, whether it is small (0.02), medium (0.15) or large (0.35). We observe that it is positive in all values, going from medium (Q2-DP2 = 0.020, Q2-DP3 = 0.276, Q2-EG1 = 0.264) to large, especially between the emotions generated in phases 2 and 3 (Q2-EG2 = 0.351), Q2-EG3 = 0.361).

In relation to the theoretical implications, there are three conclusions: (i) The considerable predictive capacity of the model, especially in the last year (R2 SB = 0.361), incorporates the value of emotions in the tourist planning processes of the territories. (ii) The study highlights the role of training actions, explaining the II Tourism Plan (2021–2023) to hotel managers structured in three phases: explanation of the strategic lines and selection of indicators, implementation of measures related to said indicators and incorporation of improvements after the implementation processes. (iii) Knowledge of the economic, environmental, social and legal implications of the tourism plan generated emotions in hotel managers, in line with what was expressed by Baum (2015), framed in the context of tourism sustainability of the territory. These emotions can alter the process and meaning of decision-making during planning (Hoch, 2006; Ferreira, 2018), so it would be necessary to take them into account.

We also find four empirical implications: (i) The study justifies that for the generation of positive emotions in hotel managers it is necessary to promote private sector–public sector cooperation, that is, continuous collaboration between all the agents involved and the administration (Sánchez-Oro Sánchez et al., 2021). (ii) Through the three phases—knowledge–implementation–improvements—the hotel managers contributed to complete the tourist planning from the public authority to influence the behavior of the final recipient of the service (Graça Ramos et al., 2021). (iii) In any planning process, it is necessary to complete the cognitive part with the sensitive part (Wang et al., 2006), since emotions have a transformative role when knowing reality (Ahmed, 2014). This has been revealed in the evolution of negative and positive emotions of hotel managers throughout the study. (iv) For decades, planning has taken place without coordination among the participating agents (Palazzo et al., 2021), but there are reasons to bet on alternative planning models in which emotion plays an important role (Hoch, 2006).

Although the work provided interesting results and derived numerous implications, it is not without limitations. The main limitation was the difficulty in contacting each of the hotel managers. Most have not collaborated with the regional administration to date in making tourism decisions. Sometimes this fact shows a distancing from the administration for various reasons: lack of information, lack of interest, mistrust, etc. In relation to this last fact, many hotel managers were suspicious about the benefits of their contributions to the tourism sector, so if they do not perceive results, they do not collaborate. Another limitation is that this was a regional study, carried out in a single region of Spain, derived from the publication of a regional tourism plan. There is no doubt that some results can be extrapolated to other regions, although they may differ when based on other regional tourism plans. In any case, this study is an approach to the incorporation of emotions in tourism planning.

In relation to future lines of research, and in line with the study’s limitations, it would be interesting to replicate this study in other regions, not only in Spain, but also in other countries. The objective would be to compare the relevance of knowledge of tourist plans on willingness to participate and the emotions that are generated.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

The publication of this work was possible thanks to the funding provided by the European Regional Development Fund and by the Consejería de Economía, Ciencia y Agenda Digital from Junta de Extremadura through grant GR21161.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.