Today, Sanxenxo has presented its Sustainable Tourism Indicators Monitoring System, developed by SEGITTUR as a result of the agreement signed between the two entities last September.
The mayor of Sanxenxo, Telmo Martín, and the Chairman of SEGITTUR, Enrique Martínez, met to discuss the System becoming a key tool in the decision-making process to design measures that will improve energy efficiency and reduce water consumption and CO2 emissions.
The first phase of the platform includes data on water quality at beaches, water consumption, tourist movements, hotel occupancy and air traffic.
Regarding water quality, information will be provided about the 17 Sanxenxo beaches taken from health monitoring, which measures the levels of intestinal enterococci and e coli.
From September onwards, data relating to energy consumption, waste production and the seasonal nature of service consumption will be included. Origin-destination mobility data, from different modes of transport and communication, is also expected to be incorporated, as well as information relating to expenditure at the destination.
Among the benefits to Sanxenxo of being able to rely on a system with these characteristics is the ability to better understand the tourism sector beyond the data, which will contribute towards making better informed decisions, in terms of both management and marketing, Enrique Martínez explained.
The mayor of Sanxenxo highlighted that this platform will help to reorient the tourism model towards sustainability, not as an added value, but as a requirement, so tourism continues to be a driver of economic and social development for the municipality.
The Chairman of SEGITTUR also presented the updated Semantics Manual for Tourist Destinations, which aims to achieve standardised communication between Smart Destinations to increase tourist confidence during COVID-19 throughout the life cycle of their trip.
This project has been carried out by SEGITTUR within the framework of a work group consisting of Sanxenxo, Santa Susanna and Conil: three Smart Destinations Network destinations.
Telmo Martín expressed his satisfaction with Sanxenxo being one of the three destinations to have tested the standard. The initiative will help to make both tourists and visitors feel more confident about the situation in the destination. Sanxenxo will use this new communication code for all the channels through which it markets and provides information about the destination.
The work group has identified the relevant information relating to COVID-19 that a tourist destination needs to convey to its visitors throughout the cycle of their trip, as well as to its own residents. It has organised this information based on the Semantics Manual for Smart Destinations: vocabulary for digital systems established in 2019 and laid out in standard UNE 178503.
The Manual has incorporated new vocabulary categories to improve tourists’ confidence and safety. For example, tourists can check the advice a destination wishes to communicate in advance so they can plan their trip accordingly, find out about the mandatory health and safety rules during their stay for each of the places they visit and have the security of knowing about all the health infrastructure and emergency services available to them.
