Toni Pérez defends the key role of the PID in improving governance and the services provided to residents, tourists, and visitors

The mayor of Benidorm, Toni Pérez, today defended the key and "accelerating" role of the Smart Destination Platform (PID) in improving the governance and management of services provided to residents, visitors, and tourists. Pérez conveyed this message during the conference "Digital Transformation in Tourism: Innovating to Compete and Connect," organised jointly by Segittur and the Diario Información newspaper, where he shared the panel with the executive director of the Costa Blanca Provincial Tourism Board, José Mancebo.

In his address, the mayor noted that Benidorm is one of the 48 Spanish destinations that have convinced the Secretary of State for Tourism and obtained funding to complete the deployment of its platform and integrate it into the national PID, which is also headquartered in the city. Specifically, the project proposed by Benidorm, which includes 20 initiatives, will receive €3,131,094; funding that covers 100% of the investment without having to resort to municipal funds.

After highlighting the opportunities that sharing and extrapolating projects and success stories opens up for destinations, Toni Pérez elaborated that “the deployment of the Smart Destination Platform (SDP) will allow us to delve deeper into a tourism management model where intelligence, data, and indicators are of great importance,” since through them “we can anticipate the realities and demands that are to come.”

He also pointed out that the deployment of the SDP is the natural and direct consequence of the tourism intelligence and digitalisation strategy undertaken by Benidorm in the fall of 2015, which achieved its first milestone three years later when it obtained certification as the first Smart Tourist Destination (STD).

Before the panel discussion on destinations committed to the SDP, the president of Segittur, Enrique Martínez, presented the scope and deployment of the Smart Destination Platform (SDP). As explained, the Digital Tourism Initiative (DTI) involves creating a “public and digital infrastructure” that helps destinations identify problems and needs and provides tools for each to develop its “tourism management policy and strategy” and address any shortcomings.

The DTI will also offer data models focused on problem-solving and establish a common semantic framework.

The president of Segittur highlighted the leadership and prestige achieved by the Spain brand in digitalisation, thanks to the development and application of the ISO 178501 Smart Tourist Destination (STD) standard, for which Benidorm was the first destination in the world to be certified. This standard has achieved international recognition and is being implemented in various countries.

The day concluded with a roundtable discussion on ‘Projects benefiting from aid for the digitalisation of tourism businesses,’ in which the Secretary General of Hosbec, Nuria Montes, participated; Natalia Andreu, Director General of Tourism Intelligence; José Cano, from Xato Restauración; David Casanova, CFO of Mundo Marina; and Tania Martínez, Project Manager of Plusholidays. This panel discussed details of some of the province's projects that have received funding from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.