The mayor identifies sustainable mobility, digital transformation and security perception as three keys of Benidorm

Sustainable mobility, digital transformation and the perception of security that tourists have of the city are three of the parameters that identify and place Benidorm in an advantageous position compared to other destinations. This was moved today by the mayor, Toni Pérez, during a discussion table held at FiturTechY, the section of the fair specialized in technology and innovation for the tourism sector and in which representatives of the destinations that make up the Alliance of Tourist Municipalities of Sun and Beach (AMT).

In what has been his first public intervention as president of the AMT, and questions from the president of Hotel Technology Institute (ITH), Joan Molas, the mayor has indicated that “in all meetings we have with tour operators always asks us why we are doing in terms of sustainability, and in this parameter, which is one of the axes of the Intelligent Tourist Destination (DTI), it has a lot to do with mobility ”.

“We have already diagnosed that more than 70% of the displacements that occur in the city are pedestrian, which has not been an obstacle to make in these last four years a network of more than 75 kilometers of bike lanes, cycle paths and cycle paths, and to pedestrianize not only the central almond but also those areas where there is more concentration of people, ”he detailed.

Pérez has stressed that "mobility is an indispensable complement to the sustainability values ​​that Generation Z is demanding, adolescents, who are prescribers of the family product", and hence Benidorm will delve into this aspect following the road map marked in the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (PMUS).

During the table, the mayor has placed the digital transformation as a fundamental basis for “the repositioning of tourist destinations”, something that Benidorm has worked intensively with the objective already accomplished of becoming the world's first certified DTI. In this sense, he pointed out that “it is not enough to have Big Data, but you have to know what to do with the data and where or in what to apply it, always taking into account that nothing we do is useful except it is scalable and replicable in other places".

Also during the table the importance that the tourist gives to security when choosing a destination has been raised. At this point, Pérez has pointed out that "the official safety rates are calculated based on the registered population, regardless of the floating population, which in the case of Benidorm can reach 400,000 people a day in high season." This calculation formula, logically, distorts the reality of security in tourist municipalities and clashes flat with "the perception that tourists have and that we now know thanks to Big Data."

In fact, "the data we obtain from surveys and the valuations of tourists on social networks, we know that people value our safety above the sun and beaches, and it is our indicator more than 93%."

Finally, and on the tourism outlook for this 2020, the mayor has pointed out that “the trend is good; everything spoken at the World Travel Market in London last November has been confirmed, and some uncertainties have been cleared up ”linked to Brexit.