The Secretary of State for Tourism, via SEGITTUR, in collaboration with the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Service, is working on the execution of the Programme for the development of data spaces and promotion of disruptive innovation across the tourism sector. This Programme is part of the environment of the Smart Destinations Platform, with which Spain aims to position itself at the forefront of tourist countries in terms of digitalisation of the tourism industry, which represents a great opportunity for the development of new high added value activities and services based on data.
To boost the new economy, different tools and structures will be put in place to structure a digitalisation project through public-private collaboration. In particular, the programme contemplates the following actions, among others:
- Creation of an “industrial data space” that supports the digital transformation of the tourism sector, moving towards the intensive use of big data and artificial intelligence, promoting and facilitating the sharing of data with a federated and sovereign system, in an environment of security and trust.
- Innovation will be promoted with a focus on enabling technologies developed for the tourism sector’s management processes, promoting the creation of digital services for the sector by companies, entrepreneurs, destinations, universities, etc.
To achieve this, an effort is being made to create the Platform of the Open Innovation Ecosystem (PIA), as well as to implement a series of use cases across the country to achieve these goals. The Platform will include:
- The creation of the national data space for the tourism sector, which will be aligned with the characteristics currently being defined in this area by the main international organisations, such as the Data Spaces Business Alliance (DSBA), Gaia X, IDSA (International Data Spaces Association), Fundación FIWARE, and BDVA (Big Data Value Association), as well as the European Commission’s initiatives to coordinate the development of sectoral data spaces, including DSSC (Data Spaces Support Centre) and CSA (Coordination and Support Action), among which are the DATES and Tourism Data Space projects. These projects aim to define the framework for the development of a European tourism data space and ensure the active participation of the different agents, which will serve as a basis for the design of the European tourism data space.
- The sector can provide companies, entrepreneurs, destinations, universities, etc. with isolated cloud computing service environments (sandbox) in which they can create and test their digital services, which will be associated with the sector needs, driving innovation based on enabling technologies developed for the tourism sector’s management processes.
- The creation of a services and applications Marketplace in the tourism sector as a dissemination channel will connect the supply and demand for digital services in the form of a public-private collaborative environment with segmented digital solutions for the companies in the sector.
