Tourism

Barcelona City Council backs innovation in tourism as a driver of economic growth in the city, part of its commitment to sustainable tourism in destination Barcelona.

Tuesday saw the celebration of the annual conference of Barcelona Travel Hub, a project promoted by the Barcelona Hotel Guild in collaboration with Barcelona City Council, the aim of which is to promote proposals that improve the tourism value chain as well as visitor and resident experience, and to become a space where organisations, companies and entrepreneurs can come together to cooperate and share knowledge in order to improve the city’s competitiveness and sustainability.

The conference opened with a welcome speech delivered by Jordi Clos, president of the Barcelona Hotel Guild, who was accompanied by Josep Santacreu, president of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce; Miquel Rodríguez, manager of Economic Promotion at Barcelona City Council. and Marta Domènech, managing director of Tourism at the Generalitat de Catalunya.

The president of the entity said that the participation of these figures in the conference highlighted the strategic value of this project, both for Barcelona and Catalonia and for the country’s business community.

In that regard, Jordi Clos declared that: “It is especially significant and important that the public and private sectors are sat here together today talking about innovation in tourism”, adding that: “We fully share with them the need to make a firm and active commitment to the quality of tourism in our destination, and innovation plays a key role in achieving this”. 

For his part, Josep Santacreu underscored the need to bear in mind “the importance of innovation as an element for bringing about activity that is both environmentally and socially sustainable”.

From the Manager’s Office for Economic Promotion, Miquel Rodríguez  added that: “Innovation is very important for ensuring that tourism, which is one of the city’s key economic drivers, continues to be competitive. We want to compete with product quality as an emblem, and that entails incorporating this innovation into the sector, an area that has the full backing of Barcelona City Council”.

Lastly, Marta Domènech highlighted the fact that: “We need to ask ourselves questions, uncomfortable ones if necessary, to ensure that technology, data and innovation provide us with solutions to the challenges we face. Barcelona and the country need it”, adding that: “Improving tourism means improving the country. Tourism is not everything, but everything is tourism”.

The Barcelona Hotel Guild has proposed to lead innovation in the city’s tourism sector through this project.

Conference programme

During the conference, which was attended by more than 150 people linked to the tourism and entrepreneurial ecosystem in Barcelona and Catalonia, the goals and activities to be undertaken  by the Barcelona Travel Hub in 2024 were set out, highlighting the programme of webinars that will be taking place over the course of the year which will reveal and give visibility to key innovation projects in the sector, and will address current issues; the “Innovation Networking” meetings, which provide a space for fostering creativity and the exchange of ideas among professionals from various sectors; the pre-accelerator programme  “GoTourism Up”, which offers training and support to entrepreneurial talent in order to boost new business models and technologies applied to the tourism value chain; the development of the Traveltech Investment Forum aimed at companies and startups from the sector and the incubator which provides specialist guidance to ensure the effective launch of the projects selected by GoTourism Up and other pre-incubation programmes.

The projects to be incubated by the Barcelona Travel Hub in 2024 were presented at the conference: HUB City Guides, Identify, BCNomad, Weyeboo and Swift.On.

The conference concluded with the roundtable “Undertaking projects with an impact on the tourism sector”, in which a discussion was held on the importance of and best mechanisms for connecting startups with capital to enable them to grow.