The president of the Provincial Council of Alicante, Toni Pérez, participated in the Málaga Conference and Exhibition Centre (FYCMA) in the round table ‘PID and territorial cohesion: tourist intelligence at the service of municipalities’, held within the framework of the GreenCities Urban Intelligence and Sustainability Forum. Pérez stressed the need for administrations to make an effort to “articulate a long-term economic governance and sustainability model that guarantees maintenance, cybersecurity, and digital evolution as a permanent infrastructure”.
He recalled that the intelligent destination platform and open innovation are key elements, and pointed out that the province of Alicante has received significant European aid that positions it at the forefront of intelligent tourism management, thanks to the work of the Costa Blanca Tourism Board. “This is a new beginning, and now we must deploy all the capacity we have in the province to maintain that leadership in tourist, economic, and social sustainability,” he stated.
The president highlighted that “tourist intelligence must be at the service of municipalities and, above all, of the people who live in them”. He added that, in a province with great territorial diversity and a strong tourist activity like Alicante, digital transformation allows for a better understanding of each destination's needs, anticipation of challenges, and data-driven decision-making.
From the Provincial Council, Toni Pérez explained, the aim is for innovation and tourist intelligence to be a tool available to all municipalities, especially those in inland areas, to improve their competitiveness and generate new development opportunities. He detailed that the hotel, tourism, services, and commerce sectors must feed this shared data space, receiving in return reliable demand forecasts and access to advanced tools, without leaving any destination behind.
During the colloquium, in which the director of the Costa Blanca Tourism Board, José Mancebo, also participated, the role of the Intelligent Destination Platform (PID) in driving the digital transformation of tourism was discussed. Toni Pérez indicated that public administrations and the private sector are the main drivers of activity, along with citizens, as they best know the reality of the territory.
The forum served to analyze, through the experiences of the provincial councils of Ourense, Cáceres, and Alicante, how the sharing of data, technology, and digital services can help municipalities, especially those with smaller populations, to improve tourism management and move towards more intelligent and sustainable territorial development models.
The GreenCities forum, which brings together experts in energy transition, AI, digitalization, and intelligent mobility, aims to connect administrations and companies to activate solutions that accelerate the climate transition, circular economy, and water resilience.
Finally, Toni Pérez emphasized that territorial cohesion involves ensuring that all municipalities benefit from digitalization, promoting a strategy where data, technology, and tourist intelligence become allies to enhance resources, diversify offerings, and move towards more sustainable and balanced tourism, both on the coast and in the interior of the province of Alicante.
For his part, Mancebo explained that the PID project is a database that collaborates with municipalities such as Benidorm, Altea, Alcoy, Benissa, Xixona, Guardamar, La Nucía, or El Campello, and highlighted the importance of data projection to understand tourist behavior and better manage flows.
