Visit Benidorm Foundation approves the reform of its statutes and consolidates its character as a public-private entity

Visit Benidorm Foundation has a new founding patron: the Servigroup hotel chain, which joins the City Council and the Hosbec hotel management. Servigroup, which has its headquarters in the city, thus becomes the third 'leg' of the public-private entity that is responsible for the tourism management of Benidorm.

The entrance of the hotel chain in the Fundamental Institutional Trust of Visit Benidorm modifies the percentages of participation in the entity. Specifically, the private initiative, embodied in Hosbec and Servigroup, now has 52.4% of the representation -50% of employers and 2.4% of Servigroup-; while the City Hall now has 47.6%.

This restructuring of the Fundamental Institutional Trust of Visit Benidorm has been approved at the ordinary meeting of the organ held today at the El Torrejó municipal center, which has been chaired by the mayor, Toni Pérez. As it has been transferred during the meeting, this restructuring "not only does not affect the operation of the management of Visit, but on the contrary: it ensures that it continues to function and work as it has been until now".

The mayor explained that "the distribution of participation that had so far, where public and private capital were distributed at 50%, forced to implement in the Foundation the management model of public administrations, which involved adding new procedures, operations and charges to the entity ". One circumstance, he pointed out, that "in practice they could duplicate procedures and efforts, making the ordinary activity of the Foundation less agile and making decisions, something that was not functional in a sector as dynamic as tourism".

However, after the step taken by Servigroup, Visit Benidorm "will continue working as before".

The mayor clarified that "despite the slight decrease in the percentage of participation of the local administration in the Foundational Institutional Trust, the City Council will not lose weight in Visit Benidorm and will continue to have a key role in decision-making".

The secretary of the Visit Benidorm Foundation and secretary of Hosbec, Nuria Montes, has informed the employers during the course of the meeting that the process of statutory reform begins, which will also culminate in the modification of the name of the Foundation, which will denominated Visit Benidorm Foundation of the Valencian Community - until now its official name is Benidorm Tourism Foundation of the Valencia Community. Likewise, a general offer has been made to all the companies and associations in the city that "if they wish to be part of the founding composition, they can request it and commit it to this process, as the Servigroup chain has done"

2017 Report and budget execution

In the same session of the Board of Trustees, the action report for 2017 was approved and the result of last year's budget year, which was closed with a surplus of just over 72,000 euros. Thus, Visit Benidorm entered 1,189,800.70 euros, while the expenditure budget stood at 1,117,157.98 euros. This surplus has passed to the budget of 2018 and has been used to cover some of the promotional actions developed in the first quarter of the year, focused mainly on the British market.

As regards the 2017 report, the Foundation carried out 243 actions in 33 countries, including fairs, trainings, blogtrips, workshops, presstrips, famtrips, co-marketing and advertising campaigns.