Benidorm presents a work plan to make the city a DTI + Safe and generate confidence in the national tourism

The mayor, Toni Pérez, today has presented a work plan that will allow Benidorm to be configured as an Smart Tourist Destination (DTI) + Safe, which will be developed in 7 weeks and will be valid for 7 months. The objective of this plan is to “build trust” and “health security” between the local population and national tourism, at least in a first phase and while waiting for the international market to also be reactivated.

Toni Pérez has indicated that for this it is necessary to “redefine the DTI Master Plan to adapt it to the new reality” arising from the Covid-19 health crisis, and from there implement measures that allow “recovering economic activity, attracting tourism generating that trust, and provide vital support to the business and social fabric during 2020 to reach 2021 reinforced ”.

The schedule of this work plan, of which the Board of Spokespersons has been informed, has already begun and will be completed before the last week of June, so that the measures are applicable before the arrival of tourists, which is expected to be will produce in July.

In a virtual press conference, the mayor stressed that "tourism has been the industry hardest hit by this crisis" and "our obligation and responsibility is to prepare for the return, adopting resilient solutions to ensure the survival of a sector that is capital for the social and economic development of our city ”.

Toni Pérez stressed that this work plan continues the multiple measures “already adopted by the City Council” to make Benidorm a more secure DTI, such as “the activation of the virtual and resilient Smart Office DTI, the Patty Recovery project, as well as specific tourist intelligence reports ”.

The mayor has emphasized that in this work plan, which is "replicable and scalable to any other destination", "we are going to give participation to the entire social, business and neighborhood fabric"; at the same time that it will join the Management Entity of the DTI "in the areas of Security, Health and Social Welfare".

Toni Pérez stressed that this work plan "was born to continue positioning Benidorm in tourism leadership, through technology applied to governance." "Our obligation," he added, "is to offer clean and safe spaces, complying with protocols that may take longer to arrive, but which will set the tone for the return to normal calendar."

Main challenges and work organization

The main challenges addressed in this work plan are: the need to build trust between tourists and residents, articulate a Resilient DTI Smart Office remotely with the creation of a scoreboard and a control panel adapted to the new crisis scenario . This will measure the territorial impact to unify and transfer validated information for the citizen and the tourist during the travel cycle, accompanying it with a communication plan 'Smart + safe tourist destination', managing security, change management and sustainability of the destination, activating public-private partnerships.

In addition to incorporating the aforementioned areas into the Management Entity of the DTI, the actions that have been scheduled include the holding of working groups and ‘webinar’ with all the departments of the City Council and the municipal corporation, as well as with the sectors involved. Likewise, the use of specialized indicator analysis tools in social and security, emergency, health, tourism, new governance and citizen participation areas is proposed.