The director of the Interuniversity Chair of the New Green Transition at the University of Valencia, Aurora Pedro, was invited to participate in the International Fair of Smart Tourist Destinations (FI-Di), organized in Argentina. This Fair, which was developed entirely online, focused on Tourist Intelligence for Economic Recovery and Sustainable Development. In this context, on November 21 the director of the Chair at the UV, intervened in the thematic block of Innovation, and participated in a round table on innovation in tourism management.
The International Fair for Smart Destinations (FIDI) is a virtual meeting where leading companies and public officials of tourism and technology from around the world share experiences and knowledge about the smart destination model. The objective is to build a space where all the actors of the Argentine and Ibero-American tourist activity converge, including researchers, teachers, officials and public agents,
referents of civil society, businessmen, suppliers and other institutional actors and citizens who contribute to the design and implementation of systems for tourist information management in local governments and companies in the sector. It is, in short, a space for disruptive and innovative exchange that tends to change the way technology and tourism events are thought.
In this International Fair the Valencian Community was widely represented, precisely because of its commitment to Smart Tourist Destinations. The main tourist institutions and the highest representatives such as Francesc Colomer, regional secretary of Tourism, Jaume Mata, head of Sustainability of the Valencia Tourism Foundation, or Mario Villar, director of INVATTUR, among other regional experts, were well attended.
Aurora Pedro focused her intervention on highlighting the great opportunity that technology offers to begin to establish a pattern of quantitative indicators that allow measuring the sustainability of a destination. From their point of view, if it has been possible to develop a general competitiveness indicator and another specific one for tourism, we can now take the step to measure elements that contribute to the sustainability of tourist destinations. The existing technology already allows us to take this step to advance in a more sustainable and, therefore, competitive management of tourist destinations.