The objective of this research was to analyse the perception of the economically active population in order to identify the factors that may affect the development of tourism and the potential tourism strengths of the city of Milagro in Ecuador. The literature review was carried out in documents published by state bodies involved in the field of tourism, scientific articles, books, case studies, and national university grade projects. In order to obtain the data, a survey with 17 items on a Likert scale of 5 points was applied; the survey was successfully completed by 360 people. The exploratory factorial analysis technique was used for empirical testing; the data were processed with SPSS software version 21. A tabulation of potential tourism strengths was also carried out in Microsoft Excel. The study identified the perceived tourism image, the perception of the importance of tourism, and the perception of government support for tourism, as the three factors that can influence the development of tourism in the sector. In addition, the study identified the existence of natural resources and industrialised agriculture as the perceived strengths that can be exploited for the benefit of tourism. SUMMONS: Arteaga Arcentales, E., Peralta Carpio, F., Castelo González, J. Echeverría Vásquez, H. (2016). Tourism development: empirical study of the economically active population of the Canton Milagro. Podium, 29, 109 – 120. doi: 10.31095/podium.2016.29.7 DOI LINK: https://doi.org/10.31095/podium.2016.29.7