The Tourism Sector Conference approved, at its meeting today, 24 Destination Tourism Sustainability Plans (PSTDs) in Andalusia, projects that will obtain 57.99 million euros for 100% of their funding, from Next Generation EU funds of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. These PSTDs correspond to the extraordinary call of 2023, which includes the 2.48 million of the initiative presented by the Provincial Council of Granada aimed at turning tourism into a driving force of dynamism in the West of Granada.
The delegate of the Government of Spain in Andalusia, Pedro Fernández, met today with the president of the Provincial Council of Granada, José Entrena, to address initiatives of provincial interest, among which are the programs financed with European funds managed by the Government of Spain and contemplated in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, such as the Tourist Sustainability Plans in Destination. Fernandez explained that the provincial administration will be able to execute a tourism project for a territory that covers three regions, “which will allow to promote measures to improve the tourist offer in the West of Granada, where one of its main problems is the continued loss of population.”
Fernandez recalled that “this is the second time that a tourism project of the Provincial Council gets funding, after the approval obtained in the ordinary call of 2021 for tourism initiatives in the Geopark, which got 2 million euros to face an investment of 4 million”.
In addition to the Provincial Council of Granada, Pedro Fernández has informed Entrena of the other two projects that have been approved in this extraordinary call, corresponding to the initiatives presented by the municipalities of Baza (1.95M€) and Castril (1.78M€), “which adds a total of 6.21 million euros for the province of Granada on this occasion”. “If we take into account the three extraordinary calls of the Sustainability Plans of 2021, 2022 and 2023 and the two ordinary calls of 2021 and 2022, we are talking about 24.5 million euros to transform our tourist destinations towards a model based on environmental, socioeconomic and territorial sustainability,” said Fernández.
In this line, he recalled that “tourism, a key engine of economic and social development for the cities and towns of Granada, was severely hit by the pandemic, so the objective is to reactivate it to be able to generate employment and wealth, create business opportunities and boost investments in the territory from a sustainable and quality point of view”. “If 2022 closed with just over 4 million visitors in Granada, this year the goal is to exceed the more than five that were counted in 2019,” added Fernández.
Since 2021, 83 Tourist Sustainability Plans in Destination in Andalusia have been launched, between ordinary and extraordinary calls, whose budgets amount to 220 million euros.
Tourism Sector Conference
In total, the Sectoral Conference approved the 175 beneficiary interventions --160 PSTDs and 15 Cohesion Actions in Destination (ACD)--of the III extraordinary call for the program of Tourism Sustainability Plans in Destinations, which is financed entirely with the Next Generation EU recovery funds.
A total of 484 PSTDs and 18 ACDs have been submitted to this call and have been valued by the technical teams of the CCAA and the SETUR in accordance with the valuation criteria established in Annex 3 of the Strategy of Sustainable Tourism in Destination.
Of the selected plans, 160 will be managed by local entities and 15 correspond to cohesion actions that will be developed by the Autonomous Communities, but that will also impact on the destinations. By type of destination, 75 corresponds to rural destination with tourist identity, 34 to tourist destinations of sun and mixed/residential beach, 21 to cities with tourist identity, 11 to sun and beach destinations very internationalized, 8 to urban tourist destinations and the rest to coastal rural destinations (5), natural spaces (5), and large urban destination (1).
The extraordinary program of Destination Tourism Sustainability Plans had for this 2023 a budget of 444,500,000 euros, which is completed with the 33,500,000 euros reserved to the plans that have as their identifying element actions related to the National Plan of Blue/Sun and Beach Tourism 2023. In total, the actions add up to an investment of 478,000,000 euros