Today more than ever before, the tourism sector is facing countless challenges. The biggest travel destinations in the world (including Spain and Malaga) have therefore found themselves forced to take action to maintain their position, create new business opportunities, promote the diversification of the markets and gain loyalty among its traditional markets. In this context arises the topic of Smart Tourism Destinations, such as Malaga and the Costa del Sol. Do you know what defines the network of smart tourism destinations in Spain? Keep reading to find out.
What is a smart tourism destination?
Smart destinations are defined by the following set of characteristics: they are innovative, benefit from an avant-garde technological infrastructure, ensure the tourism industry develops in a sustainable way, are accessible to everyone, facilitate interaction and integration between the visitor and the local surroundings, improve traveller experience in the destination as well as residents’ quality of life.
Benefits of smart tourism destinations
The main advantage of becoming a smart tourism destination is the use of innovation and technology to bring new value to the destination, resulting in increased competitiveness and efficiency. To do this, destinations need to optimise the use of resources, push for sustainable development across its three pillars (environmental, economic and socio-cultural), improve visitor experience and residents’ quality of life and devise a tourism strategy that makes the local economy more dynamic, ensuring positive results over the long term.
What actions are smart tourism destinations taking?
Turismo y Planificación Costa del Sol has been hard at work over recent years to make the Costa del Sol a leader in Smart Tourism. In the diagnostic report that included the Costa del Sol in the network of smart tourism destinations, our destination obtained an overall score of 63.7%, placing it among the most advanced destinations in the smart tourism destination model. Governance is the area which scored most highly, with 80.5%, followed by sustainability (79.3%), innovation (64%), technology (61%) and accessibility (33.8%).
Additionally, the body is working to develop a smart ecosystem to help achieve excellence when it comes to planning and executing the Action Plan, as well as to be efficient and responsible with each public investment it receives to promote tourism.
Thanks to all this work, visitors to the Costa del Sol can enjoy all the advantages of the province such as, for example, new shopping and security technologies, efficient resources and innovation management tools that optimise smart tourism.
As if all that weren’t enough, throughout 2020 and until September 2021, Malaga holds the title of European Capital of Smart Tourism alongside Gothenburg in Sweden. The Costa del Sol, as a whole, is also part of the Network of Smart Tourism Destinations in Spain.
