Benidorm is involved in good practices for the fight against Covid19, as the first certified DTI, with the Red Innpulso

Benidorm has joined the initiative of Red Innpulso and has transferred all its initiatives in the area of ​​good practices to combat COVID'19, with the active role of Benidorm City Council, Visit Benidorm Tourism Foundation and DTI Smart Office.

The objective of these measures, stressed Mayor Toni Pérez, "is that Benidorm recover and reactivate as soon as this health emergency situation ends." Given the extremely important number of confirmed cases and the number of deaths from COVID-19 worldwide in Benidorm, he points out, "we are quantifying the significant impact it will have on the economy and on the tourism industry, which is so important for Benidorm, in particular."

The tourism sector is facing an unprecedented crisis that has meant the total cessation of activity from the second half of March. From the first moment, the speed of action of the tourist destination city has been vital for the protection, aid and repatriation of tourists to their origins.

There have been three fields of action for Benidorm City Council: governance, technology and innovation as an Intelligent Tourist Destination. And in this sense, Toni Pérez pointed out that “Benidorm has poured into them the set of collaborative initiatives that pursued the coordination of actions involving civil society and the local productive fabric, the use of remote tools and technologies for crisis management. and the implementation of pioneering measures to offer immediate solutions ”.

The Collective Aid Network (#RAC) program has been implemented, which integrates aid applicants with volunteers. The Benidorm City Council has led the initiative that serves people at risk from the support and participation of citizens and groups, in the spirit of Benidorm Solidario. This program adds the support of the Social Services Area, which also includes professional psychological care, establishes protocols and implements a covered space to serve homeless people.

In addition, Benidorm is developing awareness campaigns on Social Networks both from the City Council and from the Visit Benidorm Foundation with awareness, support and solidarity messages, counting on these initiatives with the support of influencers - # QuedateEnCasa campaign - or generating content - # YoMeMuevoEnCasa , “Enjoy Benidorm from your home”, “Thank you for staying at home” or # BenidormTeEspera- and brand image (restyling of the logo and creation of Benidorm's claim) as well as a citizen participation campaign with photographs #BenidormTeEspera to maintain the destination positioned as everyone's job.

Specific sections have been created on the websites of Benidorm City Council (benidorm.org and visitbenidorm.es) with information about it and in its broadest spectrum, installing a chatbot for the coronavirus.

Regarding Security, the Local Police air unit has arranged its drones to collaborate in airborne control tasks for beaches and urbanized areas, verifying compliance with confinement even in campsites.

The DTI Smart Office, which from the first moment has been transformed into a resilient Smart Office working in virtual and maintaining its activity, has been an essential factor to optimize the use of information tools, in cooperation with Smart Tourism, Optimiza Data, Mabrian , Transparent or Adara, which have helped to define action strategies in a more effective way, as well as the mapping of the road map during the crisis.

Keys are the references worked with Mabrian, Pérez explained, "because they collect, process and analyze data from the RRSS Twitter and Instagram", and the booking management platforms Booking and Tripadvisor, and the personalized dashboard through Optimiza Data for management comprehensive of the social channels of both the Visit Benidorm Foundation and the Benidorm City Council, which in addition to the monitoring metrics, includes the monitoring of searches collected by Google Trends.

For its part, in the Explora Module (surveillance and competitive smart unit) of the Smart Office DTI, specialized reports are developed for the different municipal areas with local, national and international information and news, monitoring of social networks and research of relevant content for decision-making to mitigate the effects of COVID'19, as well as design of a control panel, specialized dashboard, of the crisis situation, crossing data and indicators on essential urban services, and monitoring of the 24/7 response service to request help and volunteer participation that responds to residents and tourists who have had to stay in Benidorm.

"The report aims to reduce uncertainty to the current situation through monitoring data extracted from smart tools and RRSS, as well as media actions carried out by the Visit Benidorm Foundation," concluded the mayor.

For its part, VisitBenidorm is analyzing and making available to the professional sector, in addition to this report, a large amount of information with access to traveler audiences in real time and unrivaled visibility of global travel demand, in order to share trends current travel. With these data we will analyze trends to be prepared for recovery once the situation stabilizes.

While no one can anticipate the full impact of these exceptional circumstances, access to data can provide insight into how travelers are responding to the current situation, the long-term impact that COVID-19 will have on destinations, and when the first signs of recovery begin to appear and Benidorm is working on it from the first moment of this crisis.