Resumo: Considering the significant rise urban tourism is currentlyexperiencing and the impact this activity generates in such environments,it is necessary to define sustainability indicatorsthat allow an efficient management of this activity. Withinthis field, the objective of this research study is to create aproposal for a system of sustainable tourism indicators forurban destinations. This applied investigation, which uses amethodology that combines both qualitative and quantitativeanalysis, stems from the conceptualization of urban tourismand ist sustainability and the implementation and quantificationof indicators. This initial analysis allows for the recognitionof the urban destinations’ sustainability dimensions andfor the variables with greater incidence in order to generatea first list of indicators. This first theoretical list of indicatorsis applied in four pilot cases (urban destinations of Catalonia:Barcelona, Tarragona, Lleida and Girona), and results in a testedsystem with four dimensions (socio-cultural, economic,environmental and institutional) which collect 26 indicators.The results show that the lack of information for the quantificationof indicators is one of the main limitations when itcomes to measuring tourism sustainability. For this reason,the constant cooperation between public administration andthe private sector is essential for the generation of data thatallows the implementation of the sustainability indicators,turning these into really useful tools in tourism planning andmanagement.
