"We want to be the Davos of tourism." This is how Jorge Brown, vice president of the Advanced Leadership Foundation (ALF), one of the organizing entities, defines the objective they pursue with this event. The Future of Tourism World Summit was born to make Barcelona a benchmark in the debate on the future of global post-coronavirus tourism. It is scheduled for October 26 and 27 of this year and will be held at the Llotja de Mar.
The summit will organize debate tables, colloquiums, interviews, and presentations on topics related to the cultural identities of territories, sustainability, smart destinations, and the personalization of the customer experience. All of these are issues that the organizers consider key to the future of tourism after covid-19.
The entities that will lead the conference are the INCYDE foundations, dependent on the Chambers of Commerce, and ALF, with the collaboration of the Barcelona Provincial Council, the Barcelona City Council, and the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona (CZFB). Companies, international experts, personalities from some sixty countries around the world, and international organizations such as the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the World Bank, and the European Commission will also participate. In addition, the attendance of ministers from eleven European, American, and Asian countries has already been confirmed.
The event will culminate with the elaboration of the Barcelona Declaration of Responsible Tourism, a proposal that will be signed by 300 world leaders with the aim that, internationally, the conclusions reached will be adopted to promote tourism and economic reactivation. The ministers attending the summit have already committed to ensuring that, within one year of the end of the conference, five entities from their respective countries will join.
In a summer where the tourism forecast is 50% of the occupancy of a normal year, the first deputy mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, believes that the European Next Generation funds will be "key" to promoting a "change of model" in the industry, which is expected to help economic recovery.
The president of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce and of the INCYDE Foundation, José Luis Bonet, believes that "it is time to reflect and incorporate the trends that the pandemic has accelerated," and the special delegate of the State in the CZFB, Pere Navarro, bets on Barcelona being "pioneering" in rethinking the "new tourism model of the new economy," and makes a call to seize the opportunity presented by the new summit.
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