Catalonia will be equipped in the coming years with a Tourism Observatory as a tool for managing the data generated by this activity, according to Xavier Font, the Catalan Government’s Deputy Director General for Territorial Tourism Development.
This is one of the novelties presented on the last day of the 2nd edition of the Tourism Forum for Coastal Destinations held at the Guitart Central Park in Lloret de Mar, which, under the slogan “Competitiveness of Sun and Beach”, has developed a programme designed with the aim of exchanging experiences and projects between the academic world, the private sector and the field. This year’s participants included the Salou-Costa Dorada Chair of Tourism Innovation and Research (Rovira i Virgili University); the Manuel Molina Chair of Tourism Innovation (University of Malaga); the Pedro Zaragoza Chair of Tourism Studies (University of Alicante); the Cajacanarias-Ashotel Chair of Tourism (University of La Laguna); the Canary Islands Chair of Tourism in Sustainability and Data Intelligence (University of La Laguna) and the Climent Guitart Chair (University of Girona).
The day began with a lecture by the Deputy Director General for Economic Sector Statistics of the Spanish National Statistics Institute, Belén González.
Xavier Font took part in a round table with the head of the Observatory of the Canary Islands, Raúl Hernández, and of the Data Science Platform for the Sustainability of Tourism Destinations and professor at the University of Malaga, Antonio Guevara. The Catalan representative at the colloquium explained that Catalonia, compared to other Autonomous Communities, also has extra data from the payment of the tourist tax.
The programme included the participation of the former rector of the University of Barcelona, Juan Tugores, who gave a talk entitled “Economy in times of geopolitical complexity: implications for tourism”, in which he highlighted the value of the tourism sector and its importance in the Spanish economy.
Afterwards, the Mayor of Lloret and President of the Alliance of Tourist Municipalities (AMT), Adrià Lamelas, explained the challenges and opportunities of the leading sun and beach destinations in Spain, and the morning programme ended with a round table of tourism destination managers with the participation of the manager of Lloret Turisme, Elizabeth Keegan. In the afternoon, the various presentations and debates between the chairs on innovation and competitiveness in tourism took place.
In the framework of the forum, it was recalled that tourism accounts for 12.3% of Spanish GDP and that in 2024, 93.8 million tourists were reached.
The forum ended with the Director of the Climent Guitart Chair, Professor Anna Garriga, who explained that the increase in the tourist tax will not solve the problem of the indebtedness of tourist municipalities, and the closing address was given by the Mayor of Lloret de Mar, Adrià Lamelas, who once again highlighted “the importance of scientific evidence to move towards more sustainable tourism”.
The Coastal Destinations Tourism Forum is organised by the Climent Guitart Foundation, the University of Girona and Lloret de Mar Town Council through its Climent Guitart Chair: Orientation, Innovation and Competitiveness in Coastal Tourism.
