Benidorm puts out to tender an AI-assisted chatbot to improve communication and access to services for residents and tourists.

The Local Government Board of Benidorm City Council has approved the start of the bidding process for an artificial intelligence (AI)--assisted chatbot to improve communication and access to resources and services for residents and tourists, through an ordinary and harmonized open procedure. This was announced by the city's mayor, Toni Pérez, who explained that this project is one of the actions contemplated in the 'Benidorm Vision 360' Destination Tourism Sustainability Plan and has a base bidding budget of €327,349.58, VAT included.

The 'Benidorm Vision 360' Sustainability Plan is part of the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan, financed with Next Generation EU Funds. It has a total budget of €6.1 million, which will allow the city to develop up to fourteen actions within four axes of action: green transition; improving energy efficiency; digital transition; and competitiveness—to adapt the city to the most innovative and sustainable reality.

The mayor noted that “at Benidorm City Council, we continue to make progress in the development of this ‘Vision 360’ Sustainability Plan, which, in addition to this action, includes other important initiatives such as the second phase of the lighting catenary on our Paseo de Levante, which we also awarded yesterday.”

The development of this chatbot aims to “provide information and assistance in an efficient and accessible manner through a conversational virtual assistant, implementing advanced artificial intelligence technologies,” explained Toni Pérez. Thus, this virtual assistant must "provide detailed and up-to-date tourist information on local attractions, events, and services; facilitate interaction with municipal services, ensuring accessibility and multilingualism; integrate with the City Council's existing digital platforms to optimize the user experience; and ensure informational consistency," while also ensuring that this solution "is scalable, allowing for its future evolution and integration with other municipal tools," as stated in the tender documents.

Among the benefits that this tool will bring to the City Council, the Mayor highlighted "the improvement in information, experience, and user satisfaction," as a chatbot allows "real-time responses to queries about transportation, accommodation, tourist attractions, cultural events, municipal procedures, and environmental information, offering citizens and tourists a reliable and accessible tool from any device connected to the internet."

It also allows for more accessible, inclusive, and multilingual information, which "is essential for Benidorm due to the large influx and diversity of tourists it attracts." Finally, this tool will also advance the promotion of transparency and citizen participation, while also integrating it with the DTI Platform and other municipal open data systems, "promoting the generation of metrics and indicators based on user interaction with this chatbot and, in turn, allowing the City Council to refine its tourism, cultural, and environmental strategies, orienting them toward the real needs of the community and visitors."

The contract is due within nine months from its award and formalization. Those interested in participating in this tender have 30 calendar days following the date the notice is sent to the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU).