The center is located in the municipal building of El Torrejó, as an open space for startups, companies, institutions and citizens, aligned with the state PID and PIA
Benidorm opens the doors of ‘BeCiti’ hub to become a benchmark for innovation and tourism management
It already has around twenty collaborators interested in developing projects, studies, and technological solutions.
Mayor Toni Pérez states that this space will be “a hub for attracting talent and generating ideas that will enable destinations and the sector to be more competitive and sustainable.”
Benidorm City Council opened the doors of BeCiti hub this Tuesday at El Torrejó Municipal Centre. This pioneering centre in the field of smart tourism innovation, promoted by the City Council, aims to foster the transformation of the tourism sector through sustainability, technology, and collaborative intelligence. The city's mayor, Toni Pérez, along with BeCiti's manager, Silvia Blasco, and the councillor for Innovation and European Funds, Aida García Mayor, officially presented the space that will physically house this project. Other members of the City Council also participated in the event, as did the manager of Concessions for Veolia (formerly Hidraqua) in the Valencian Community, Ciriaco Clemente; the president of Hosbec and the Hotel Technology Institute, Fede Fuster; and the president of ADESTIC (the Cluster of Innovative Companies for Tourism), Salvador Benaigues; along with other social and business stakeholders.
Toni Pérez recalled that BeCiti hub – Benidorm Smart Tourism Innovation Centre – began its journey six months ago and announced that it already has around twenty companies and institutions interested in collaborating. Agreements will be finalised shortly to jointly develop projects, studies, and technological solutions that can be tested in the city before being implemented in other destinations.
Therefore, the mayor emphasised that this new space will be a “fountain for talent and a generator of ideas that will enable destinations and the tourism sector to be more competitive and more sustainable.” He added that with it, “we are taking a quantitative and qualitative leap forward in the work we have been doing since 2015, when we decided that Benidorm needed to recover its tourism reputation and designed a roadmap that resulted in our certification as the world’s first smart tourism destination, and everything that has followed since.”
“We are continuing on the path of Benidorm Smart Tourism Destination (DTI), with our sights also set on strengthening co-governance and the public-private collaboration that SDG 17 calls for,” stated the mayor, “so that we can remain at the forefront and a benchmark in tourism in terms of digitalisation, sustainability, accessibility, and innovation.” Indeed, the center will offer a workspace open to startups, companies, institutions, research centers, and the public, and will also be aligned with the national Smart Destination Platform (PID) project, promoted by Segittur and headquartered in Benidorm, as well as with the Open Innovation Platform (PIA), proposed by the same state agency and also located in our city.
Regarding its implementation in the El Torrejó building, the mayor also highlighted that this project “culminates a dream that we began to materialize almost twenty years ago, which was to convert the old Torrejó town hall into a great center at the service of tourism” bringing together in the same space “our central tourist information office and also the facilities of the municipal Tourism department and Visit Benidorm, to which this innovation hub is now added”.
The water challenge
BeCiti project is part of the ‘Benidorm DTI + Seguro’ Tourism Sustainability Plan and has been developed in partnership with Bosonit, a technology consultancy specialising in Data and Advanced Analytics, and a leading company in the implementation of solutions based on generative artificial intelligence.
To achieve its objectives, it will have a team of five professionals in technology, data, and innovation. Their work will be complemented by that of staff working in the Smart Office and other municipal departments, and collaborating companies with which specific technological projects or solutions will be developed.
From its inception, the hub has benefited from the collaboration of Veolia and Hosbec, with whom it is working closely on the first challenge set forth by this hub: optimising water management within hotel administration. This will allow tourist establishments to replicate the model that has made Benidorm one of the world's most water-efficient destinations. For this reason, both Ciriaco Clemente and Fede Fuster have applauded the work being carried out within the innovation hub, which they have described as "a completely new way of understanding tourism management."
