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The experts who participated in the first day of “Tourism: reinventing the present” analyzed in Pontevedra the effects of the pandemic and the challenges that the sector has to face

Experts in innovation, human resources, protocols and smart tourism participated today in the first day of the meeting “Tourism: reinventing the present”, organized by the Galicia Tourism Cluster in collaboration with the Provincial Council of Pontevedra.

The meeting, focused on identifying the immediate challenges of tourism, conditioned by the pandemic and by the digital transformation, will close tomorrow, with a session on “Smart destinations and business communication.”

The first session, developed in a semi-face-to-face way, began with an opening ceremony in which the deputy for Tourism of the Pontevedra Provincial Council, Ana Laura Iglesias; the director of the Competitiveness Area of ​​the Galicia Tourism Agency, María Baleato, and the president of the Galician Tourism Cluster, Cesáreo Pardal.

The importance of collaboration, especially at a time like the present, focused the intervention of the president of the Cluster. In this sense, he announced his intention to promote a meeting between all Administrations, including city councils and county councils through FEGAMP, to seek measures that help the sector to resist and recover.

He also referred to the need for collaboration between companies to face the challenges of digital transformation. The tools provided by new technologies are not always affordable or adapted to specific needs, which is why he advocated integration and collaboration strategies “because they usually involve large investments and the application of very advanced knowledge.” He defended the continuation of the line of collaboration with the Universities that began with the 2020 Strategy and now continued with the 2021-2023 Master Plan.

At the end of the morning, the president of the Pontevedra Provincial Council, Carmela Silva, defended the path of collaboration and encouraged the Galicia Tourism Cluster to continue demanding coordinated action. Carmela Silva encouraged the sector to participate in recovery fund programs related to digital transformation and, specifically, to Smart Tourist Destinations.

In the first presentation, Fabián González, from “The digital band”, analyzed the possible recovery scenarios for the tourism sector and pointed out that different scenarios have been studied. Among them, the most probable projection, which is halfway between the most optimistic and the most pessimistic forecasts, tourism will not recover the turnover volumes of 2019 until 2024. In this scenario, 2021 would have a turnover of around one 70 percent compared to 2019, the year that was taken as a reference.

David Bonilla, Manfred, analyzed the good evolution of the new technology sector and encouraged the tourism industries to use these tools, which are sometimes available in the cloud at very affordable prices.

Sixto Arias, founder of Capaball, focused his speech on the description of a new scenario featuring artificial intelligence in which concepts such as education evolve towards training and labor relations as we know them disappear for the sake of greater independence from professionals.

The afternoon session consisted of two round tables on Protocols and resilience applied to tourism ”and“ Data: pillar of tourism intelligence ”.

The commercial director of Paradores, José Carlos Campos, pointed out that the positive aspect that tourism will extract from the pandemic will be greater professionalization.

For his part, Gerson Beltrán, from “Play & go Experience” warned about the challenge of being scrupulous with ethical compliance in the processing of personal data. He also proposed that small tourism companies use public and free tools that allow them to know data on aspects such as the movement of people based on certain profiles, such as their origin.

You can follow tomorrow’s session HERE from 10:00 h.