Big data meets tourism: Catalonia launches project to turn Barcelona province into [622585]

Big data meets tourism: Catalonia launches project to turn Barcelona province into
a smart and sustainable destination

Surrounding the Catalan tourist hotspot of Barcelona is a network of 35 regional destinations that are about
to change the landscape of sustainable tourism management.
Some say Catalonia has a success problem: f ew tourism destinations parade a similar mix of cultural
heritage, natural diversity and culinary art paired with kilometres of sandy beaches . But while tourism
represents an important economic factor especially for the province’s capital Barcelona, the sector also
poses challenges to local residents and sustainability . The capacity and effects of the annual tourist
penetration have been vigorous ly measured in the Barcelona region for many years and allowed for a unique
Tourism Information System to be put in place by LABturisme (Tourism LAB) , the technical tourism office
within Diputació de Barcelona ( Barcelona’s Provincial Council ). The system relies on the analysis of an
impressive amount of 40 tourism indicators, but its real strength is in the integration of big data to measure
the sustainability and competitiveness of 35 regional destinations within the Barcelona province.
LABturisme has d edicated its activities to research, training and education for tourism technicians and looks
back at over ten years of data collection and analysis that ticked many boxes in the E uropean Tourism
Indicator System (ETIS) scheme , which the destination is imp lementing since 2014 . Damià Serrano Miracle,
Head of LABturisme, says, “ The ETIS scheme provided a good framework to be able to benchmark our
findings against a set of universally recognised indicators. But at LABturisme, the magic words are big data
and smart destination . We believe that in order to create sustainable destination profiles, you also have to
consider things like mobility and transport statistics, supply and demand data, website visits and social
media engagement. ”
In order to carry out data collection in all regions, cooperation with local stakeholders was of great added
value to the project and provided an opportunity for LABturisme to make collaborators understand that
sustainability is important, but may only yield effective benefits in s ome years time. Since the evolution of
sustainable measures is best measured through benchmarking, the project coordinators have implemented a
scoring system that compares and ranks the sustainability of destinations and creates a healthy battle
between al l 35 regions in their sustainability evolution .
The researchers at LABturisme also
recognis ed that national bench –
marking has its limitations , says
Damià: “It would be a mistake to think
that just because two regions are
located close to one another
geographically, they face the same
challenges in touristic development or
territorial planning. Take Maresme
county at the Costa Barcelona and
the Bages county f urther inside the
mainland for example: even though
the two regions are less than 80 km apart, demographic indicators, publication density and economic activity
are very different. So we shouldn’t use national affiliations as the basis for comparing the co mpetitiveness of
regions, but rather compare apples with apples, such as mature coastal tourist destinations in Spain with
very similar destinations in Italy or Greece .”
As big data become more and more important in sustainable tourism development, so wil l the value of smart
tourist destination indicators and EU -wide benchmarking . The LABturisme approach may well have
replication potential in other Catalan regions and the city of Barcelona itself and definitely contributes to other
efforts in sustainable tourism development that Catalonia has been internationally recognized for: in
November 2015, the autonomous community was awarded the certification of first Biosphere D estination as
an integral tourist region by the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and the Glo bal Sustainable Tourism
Council.
Further information:
LABturisme . Diputació de Barcelona.
http://www.diba.cat/web/dturisme/labturisme
Catalunya Tourism
http://www.catalunya.com/
Ref. Ares(2016)1208249 – 09/03/2016