Benidorm Vision 360 will be presented again and it will be done

Benidorm has been part this morning in Valencia of the mayors' table of the National Congress of the Spanish Network of Smart Cities that has dealt with the remains and opportunities of the 2030 Agenda, the SDGs and the Next Generation Funds so that cities are inclusive, resilient and sustainable.
Along with Toni Pérez, moderated by the head of the European Regional Development Funds IDOM, the Mayor of Santander and the mayors of Palma de Mallorca, Logroño and Valencia, provincial capitals with a strong demographic weight, participated.
The mayor of Benidorm differentiated between the crisis of 2008, “in which tourism was a tractor” and “it took us out of it”, and the current crisis, “for which Europe has provided the necessary funds that coincide with our plans and proposals. aligned with the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda ”. He asked for agility in the treatment of the proposals.
Benidorm, Pérez pointed out, has participated; and "Benidorm's mature and strategic project has been left out of this call, being the only highly internationalized tourist destination in the Valencian Community". For the mayor "this situation is unspeakable". And he added that "until Thursday" the projects of the other eight municipalities that are members of the Alliance of Sun and Beach Tourist Municipalities had not entered either.
In this regard, Pérez pointed out: “in the Alliance we represent 63 million overnight stays, 40% from Spain”, with which “obviously there is unequal treatment”. And he pointed out another “grievance”: “the fifteen World Heritage Cities will be endowed with funds, which will deserve it; but the municipalities of the Alianza de Sol y Playa have to go to participatory competition and pay us VAT "
Benidorm presented, he recalled, "a mature and strategic project" with which it has been left out. Benidorm Vision 360 "will be presented again" in a new call, "if it occurs" and "however it will be carried out, by competitive concurrence", Regarding "the detail of VAT", said the mayor that many of the municipalities that receive aid they encounter this financial inconvenience.
Pérez claimed "to take care of what works" and "to make an effort to understand the effort that the tourism industry has already made and that should be rewarded."
"If we have an exemplary model that can be exported to all of Europe," said the mayor of Benidorm, "what you have to do is finance it."
After that, he pointed out the strengths of resilience, innovation and sustainability of Benidorm, "where the city is the destination and the destination is the city", highlighting water management together with the Hidraqua-SUEZ group, and the importance of public collaboration- private.
In his previous presentation, the mayor of Benidorm highlighted at the mayors' table that Benidorm was “in the start-up of the network, being the city with the least population that joined it, when we processed our UNE178501 Smart Tourist Destination certification ”.
In his presentation, Pérez pointed out that tourist cities are dimensioned to provide services to a larger population than the census "which in the case of Benidorm reaches up to six times more", and the DTI opportunity is key to improve and bet on innovation, technology , sustainability and universal accessibility, which results in better governance and affects residents and visitors.
Now, the mayor said to everyone, "we must continue working to make the administration more agile, closer and more efficient with the tools that the DTI offers us." He advocated for the alliance to achieve the objectives –ODS17- and pointed out the importance of Benidorm hosting the “Data Space” of the Smart Platform for Tourist Destinations so that “we can all have the permeability of the data, together with the experience of managing better, for better governance of cities ”.