The Government of Spain, through the Ministry of Industry and Tourism, has announced the provisional granting of an aid of 4,794,152 euros to the City of Santander for the digital transformation as a tourist destination.
In total, the Ministry headed by Jordi Hereu has approved grants of almost 95 million euros for the digital transformation of 46 tourist destinations, through grants that will allow to accelerate the acquisition of digital technologies to improve destination management and the competitiveness of companies, in addition to promoting collaboration between administrations.
These grants will also allow beneficiary destinations to develop digital solutions that link their management to the Intelligent Destination Platform (PID) created by the Ministry of Industry and Tourism.
The government delegate in Cantabria, Eugenia Gómez de Diego, explained that the purpose of this aid is twofold. On the one hand, promote more digital and intelligent relationships between tourists, companies and residents in the destinations. On the other hand, generate data that allows more informed decision-making on challenges related to more efficient and sustainable management of destinations, addressing challenges such as saturation or the use of public services.
After evaluating the 250 applications received in the call for grants, 46 projects have been selected for funding. The grants are distributed among different types of entities: municipalities (59.4%), provincial deputies, island councils and councils (35%) and uniprovincial autonomous communities (5.6%), with assigned amounts of 56.4 million euros, 33.2 million euros and 5.3 million euros, respectively.
These projects will be integrated into the Smart Destination Platform (PID), strengthening the common project that will serve all other destinations in the Smart Tourism Destination Network. This country platform project aims to improve the balance between tourist and residential use of destinations, putting the resident in the center.
Platform development country
The PID aims at the digital transformation of the tourism sector and seeks for destinations to optimize their management through the implementation of innovative digital tools. This will allow a better relationship between tourists, companies and residents and a more efficient management of public services.
This platform will be designed in a modular way, so that components can be added progressively and will allow the development of new shared solutions that will benefit tourist destinations with common needs and diagnoses. The IDP core node modules that have generated the most interest among destinations have been those related to destination surveys, data exploitation systems or tourism information systems.
Spain, international tourism reference
In the framework of a forum on tourism organized by CEOE in Madrid, the Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu, has taken advantage of the announcement to make a balance of the year in the sector. A 2024 that has consolidated Spain as an international reference for the variety, quality and sustainability of its tourism offer and that is heading, in the absence of the definitive data of the last months, to a new record of spending on destination and arrival of international tourists.
This statistical impetus is also serving to promote the social transformation of the sector, with more and better jobs (today we have seen the affiliation figure for November, which adds 135,000 new jobs, the vast majority of employees), seasonalization of supply and deconcentration of destinations.