The Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism, through SEGITTUR, has presented the diagnostic report and action plan for Marbella for its conversion into a Smart Tourist Destination. This report was announced at the Marbella technology breakfasts by the Director of Business Development and New Technologies, Enrique Lancis, an event in which the Mayor of Marbella, Ángeles Muñoz, was also present.

Marbella is the first destination in Andalusia in which the report is carried out, and the first that has been co-financed by the City Council itself, which highlights Marbella's interest in changing the tourism model. The diagnostic report, which is articulated around the four axes of a smart destination – innovation, technology, sustainability and accessibility – highlights that one of the central axes of action of the Marbella city council is the commitment to technologically advanced innovative projects, which give response to the needs of the digital tourist.

In this sense, initiatives such as the Marbella Digital Agenda, the Digital Electronic Platform, the Territorial Information System and the Marbella Open Data stand out, which demonstrate the possibilities that innovation, in its different facets, brings to the fore. service of the destination to improve its competitiveness. Actions such as the upcoming creation of the Wi-Fi network with points distributed throughout the city are highly valued in the report, since this initiative allows not only citizens, but also tourists, the connectivity that is an essential requirement for a smart destination. .

Marbella will be one of the pioneer destinations in the use of iBeacons in the main tourist spots of the city to provide additional information to tourists who visit it through applications that are being developed for this purpose. The report emphasizes that an action that will enhance its conversion into a smart tourist destination is to continue advancing in the sensorization of the city to improve different location services such as parking spaces, road traffic prediction or energy savings.

In terms of sustainability, Marbella shows a high degree of interest in reorienting its urban strategy towards a more sustainable development model. In this sense, the report recommends, among other measures, the establishment of a series of carrying capacity indicators to prevent tourist overexploitation and environmental deterioration.

Accessibility improvements

Accessibility is another of the axes on which the report works, in which recommendations are established to improve accessibility in architectural spaces and urban spaces, while at the same time it is proposed to carry out an accessibility diagnosis of the tourist offer private for the subsequent development of an accessible tourist guide of the city.

Finally, the report concludes that Marbella has taken the first steps towards its conversion into a Smart Tourist Destination, which will generate a series of competitive advantages that will not only benefit the tourism sector, but will impact other sectors, contributing to increase income in the municipality.