The mayor of Benidorm values the UNE178501 standard: "assessing yourself means improving"
Toni Pérez encourages to get the DTI certification: “Benidorm has been stimulated to be better”
At the International Conference on Tourism Quality and Sustainability, the president of ICTE concludes that "Tourism can learn a lot from Benidorm"
Early this afternoon, the mayor of Benidorm, Toni Pérez, participated in table 3 -Certification of Smart Tourist Destinations for efficient management- together with the mayor of Torremolinos, Margarita Cid, the mayor of Altea, Jaume Llinares, Rafael Fuentes, Western Costa del Sol DTI coordinator and Javier García Díaz, UNE General Director. Fernando Fraile, general director of ICTE, moderated the interventions, highlighting, at the beginning of the table, its suitability and warning that "Tourism can learn a lot from Benidorm".
Pérez showed his satisfaction because “there are now five” certified DTIs in Spain, highlighting the importance of the standard and the subsequent evaluation processes: “what is not evaluated is devalued”. For Benidorm, he insisted, the certification and the audits represent "a great effort that has been worth it."
Pérez explained that thanks to the process "we have managed to improve in all areas" and thus managed to "certify the quality of the destination as a whole". For the mayor of Benidorm, "assessing oneself implies improvement" and entails "a desire to improve and an increase in one's demands".
He highlighted the fundamentals of "conviction and political determination to achieve the objectives" and recalled the process followed by Benidorm from "autumn 2015 to December 2018" describing the certification under the UNE178501 standard as a "window of opportunity". Now, in 2022, Pérez said, “we are one of the few cities to reach 90% compliance, which has made us much better for residents and visitors” because “providing the best services is the goal.”
He encouraged those present to lose their fear of certification and stressed that "Benidorm works to continue being the best tourist destination."
The congress was opened by the president of Murcia, Fernando López, and the Secretary of State for Tourism, Fernando Valdés, together with the mayor of Cartagena, Noelia Arroyo, and the president of ICTE, Miguel Mirones.
