Tourism

Culture, sport and gastronomy all stand out on the agenda for 2024, with projects centred on the America's Cup, the blue economy and the Tàpies' Year. The key action areas focus on improving visitor-city interaction, the digitalisation of the sector and the promotion of quality in tourism.

The Barcelona Tourist Consortium General Council held its annual meeting on Monday at Barcelona City Hall, a meeting at which Mateu Hernández was confirmed as the new managing director. His appointment had been proposed by the Consortium’s Executive Committee on 29 November this year, and comes after a period in which the post had remained vacant. The confirmation of the appointment serves as the starting point of a new phase which also includes the appointment of Jordi Clos as chair of the Executive Committee a few weeks ago.

In a session chaired by the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, and attended by the chair of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Josep Santacreu, the Barcelona Tourist Consortium also approved a 5% increase in the budget for 2024, taking the total to 53.5 million euros. This increase is mainly down to the arrival of EU funds dedicated to digital transition projects which will be implemented between now and 2026 that will act as a lever for the digital transformation of the tourism sector, and also to the contributions from Barcelona City Council to ensure the big events of 2024 can go ahead, such as the America’s Cup and the Tàpies Year programme, as well as the promotion of the blue economy and meetings and congresses (MICE tourism) and more.

The meeting, which was also attended by Jordi Valls, deputy mayor for economy, finance, economic promotion and tourism, and by designated representatives from Barcelona City Council, the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce and the Barcelona Promoció Foundation, also served as an opportunity to define the Consortium’s action plan for the coming months, which mainly focuses on managing tourism in the best possible way to ensure its continued role as one of the city’s most important economic drivers. The Barcelona Tourist Consortium’s priorities include improving the interaction between visitors and the city, modernising and digitalising promotion and communication channels and management tools, stepping up the promotion of smart tourism with a focus on quality, and the need to look after Barcelona’s external reputation, and more.

The intention of the Barcelona Tourist Consortium is to give preference to working on the segments that have the greatest potential, taking into account the idiosyncrasies of the city and its people, placing the focus on a collective, cross-cutting and decentralised form of promotion that prioritises meetings and congresses and sporting and cultural events. The strength of the Barcelona brand and the programme of congresses and consumer loyalty, together with other factors place the Catalan capital, a mature destination, in a privileged position to move towards a responsible tourism model with an intrinsic interest in living the Barcelona experience.

The multi-year projects include those for the digitalisation of the sector financed using EU Next Generation funds, which will be the most important budget and work lines in the coming years. This digitalisation project is based on the creation of a platform that will connect the Barcelona offer with process automation and big data analysis in order to personalise communication with visitors.

Likewise, the global pull of the America’s Cup prefigures a year of intense exposure for brand Barcelona, with a positive impact on the blue economy. The Barcelona Tourist Consortium wants city residents to feel like fellow participants in a free, open event that can be followed from the city’s beaches, and also in a series of events that will be taking place over the course of the year to extend the impact beyond the event itself.