The revaluation of the environment, accessibility, protection of heritage or its advances in digitization are factors that allowed Valencia, together with Bordeaux, to be designated by the European Commission as the European capital of smart tourism in 2022.
A recognition of the work of recent years that speaks of the “co-governance” that has been done in the city, as all the participants agreed yesterday in a new La Vanguardia Dialogues, held at the offices of GoHub, the corporate investment of Global Omnium, and promoted by the Business Confederation of the Valencian Community (CEV) and Visit València.
Participating in the debate were Francesc Colomer, Regional Secretary for Tourism; Antoni Bernabé, managing director of Visit València; Eva Blasco, president of CEV Valencia; Nuria Montes de Diego, general secretary of Hosbec and Juan Luis Pozo, director of sustainability of Global Omnium.
“Our model has made it possible for us to listen to businessmen, residents, etc. and that has made it possible to consolidate a consensus strategy in an exercise in dialogue and public-private co-responsibility”, highlighted Emiliano García, Councilor for Tourism of the Valencia City Council and who welcomed the debate moderated by the delegate of La Vanguardia in the Community Valenciana, Salvador Enguix.
Antoni Bernabé was the first to point out that València “has complied. When we talk about smart tourism we talk about four axes and the first is sustainability, and Valencia has known how to do its homework and therefore the recognition of the European Commission”. Eva Blasco, for her part, pointed out along the same lines, although she pointed out that sustainability is also “economic and social”.
And to put a ‘but’ led to the debate the pedestrianization of the city to remember that although “València has done well, but we believe that it is important to design a mobility plan in the city in collaboration with the private sector”.
In his opinion, the tourist is not taken into account too much, “nor the connectivity needs that the tourist has.” In that sense, Nuria Diego added that “now all the work has to be done to maintain the category in which Valencia already plays”.
Working together was one of the aspects on which the participants most agreed, which was key, according to Blasco, to carrying out large projects: “If we talk about strengths, I think this is more important. The projects have to come out with the collaboration of the private sector and that has worked”, said the businesswoman.
An example of this is the role of Global Omnium, a company with which the city has gone hand in hand to certify its carbon footprint. “What always surprised me was how difficult it was to believe it and now we want to collaborate with the city to make Valencia the first sustainable destination in the world.
The Valencian company will talk about this feat, as announced by Juan Luis Pozo, at the next Climate Summit in Egypt (COP27), where they will present the risk assessment map of Valencia so that “cities can be compared”.
For Hosbec, an association that represents the interests of hotels in the Valencian Community, with more than 100,000 beds, going hand in hand with the Administration has also been key at this time.
“Public-private collaboration has been fundamental because it was important to carry out many projects, but micro-SMEs still have difficulties and right now our main weakness is finding human capital,” he recalled.
This introduced one of the main problems facing the tourism sector, finding labor in a sector with little mechanization.
In the opinion of Francesc Colomer, it is necessary to “qualify more and better, catch workers at an age that makes it difficult, overcome the reputation of the sector because the waiter of tomorrow will not carry dishes, will tell a story, and also work with collective agreements worthy”. It was his diagnosis for the balance of a debate that sought to reflect on the tourist Valencia that now, also with the consensus of all, “plays in the Premier League of tourism”.
