Barcelona Global urges to promote academic, wellness, and health tourism

Barcelona must consolidate its leadership as a tourist city and attract segments of quality travelers, an objective that does not necessarily involve expensive, sustainable, and competitive tourism. With this idea, Barcelona Global has designed a work proposal for the sector and administrations in which it defends the need to find new reasons to visit Barcelona.

"If at the time Barcelona knew how to bet on fair, congress, and event tourism, and has become an international benchmark, now we must generate new reasons for the city to be attractive to visitors, with an offer that also has an economic impact," explained the entity's general director, Mateu Hernández. And hence the sector's proposal: to position Barcelona as a destination for wellness and health tourism and academic tourism.

The Catalan capital has outstanding elements for being a destination for health treatments, such as excellent public and private health services, relevant actors in the cosmetic industry, and "the capital of the Mediterranean diet that has an extraordinary accommodation and wellness infrastructure to develop," according to the working document prepared by the association.

Likewise, Barcelona has the opportunity to become a new hub for international higher education in Europe. It is an opportunity to position itself at the level of other European cities such as Amsterdam, Copenhagen, or Berlin that have launched internationalization plans for their university system by creating degrees aimed at foreign students or by forming alliances with international research centers and local universities, to name some of Barcelona Global's proposals.

The association argues that Barcelona has the opportunity to become a new hub for international higher education in Europe

The president of the entity, Aurora Catà, states that "we have to make a collective effort, both civil society and administrations, to solve the problems on the table." Catà adds that "the time to do it is now, moving from diagnosing the problem to executing the measures to solve it.

In this regard, Mateu Hernández has stated that "tourism is not an isolated sector, but central to the Barcelona model, and well managed it can be an engine for the talent economy, which is the real future of the city's economy."

With these objectives and a call for public-private dialogue as "key" to achieving them, Barcelona Global has put forward ten concrete proposals for discussion, based on the recovery of trust between the public and private sectors so that they can be translated into initiatives, with a timeline and commitments from all parties.

1. 1. Destination quality, focused on public space, safety, cleanliness, and the use of technology.
   2. A facilitating, active, and dynamic administration that guarantees legal certainty in the sector and in investment, provides agility in decision-making, and promotes a quality offer in all dimensions of tourism in Barcelona.
   3. Design of aid for the sector that adapts to economic recovery and incentivizes investment and quality.
   4. An intercontinental hub, as well as prioritizing cruises starting and ending in Barcelona.
   5. Prioritize culture as a city asset and a key factor in creating a quality city offer for both residents and visitors.
   6. A dynamic and active city center for Barcelonans, visitors, and economic activity, with special emphasis on La Rambla, Via Laietana, Ciutadella, Paral·lel, and Montjuïc.
   7. New sectors of the economy to attract new visitors, such as Barcelona of health and wellness and Barcelona of higher education.
   8. The de-seasonalization of the tourist season, betting again on large events as a driver of urban promotion and transformation and prioritizing Christmas and winter as a strategy.
   9. Renewed public-private collaboration based on action plans and shared commitments.
   10. Renewed city promotion in which all involved sectors are committed.

The proposals from Barcelona Global are the result of work carried out by the association with more than 30 involved actors: leaders from the hotel industry, commerce, mobility, restoration, cultural facilities and companies, service companies, and major tourist attractions. Additionally, to concretize them, they also conducted more than 40 hours of interviews with 25 of the sector's entrepreneurs and executives in the city.