Taking advantage of the Olympic momentum, Barcelona's tourism policy had a clear mission: to put Barcelona on the map. The relatively invisible city became an attractive city, thanks to the promotion and presentation of its assets, heritage, Gaudí, design, gastronomy, Mediterranean life, the sea. This has allowed the city to lead some international rankings, such as attracting congress attendees, and has helped attract talent, companies, startups, projects, and festivals.
In 2017, the city made a momentous decision: it decided to limit the growth of accommodation supply and, therefore, limit the number of tourists. We have entered a new stage that has shifted the center of gravity of tourism policy from promotion to management. Managing means making decisions about how and not about how much. It implies influencing the type of tourists, the environmental footprint, the use of space and territorial distribution, or the urban landscape of tourist areas.
Not only have the city's tourist beds been limited. The agreement with the Port of Barcelona reduces the number of terminals from seven to five and, when what is planned is completed in 2030, reduce the port's capacity from 37,000 to 31,000 cruise passengers per day. Finally, the Bus 4.0 plan has impacted the third vector of visitors, day-trippers, and reduced the pressure of tourist buses in the center. Thanks to the program, the occupancy of tourist buses in areas of higher concentration has been significantly reduced. Therefore, limits on tourism act on the three entry systems into the city: tourists, cruise passengers, and day-trippers.
The second axis of tourism management is the reorientation of the visitor profile. Currently, more than 60% of visitors have a main motivation for leisure, and the objective is to orient demand to the three thirds: one third professional tourists (congresses and fairs), one third cultural tourists, and one third leisure tourists. This diversified model not only generates a more resilient tourism structure, less dependent on a single profile, but also creates greater diversification in stays and less pressure in areas of higher tourist concentration.
Surely, the singular element of Barcelona's tourism management is the High-Traffic Areas (EGA). These eight tourist areas concentrate most of the visits and also accumulate the highest number of impacts: on mobility, on daily life, on the commercial structure... The EGA plan includes more than 100 measures aimed at reducing tourism pressure on the urban landscape and on the use of space. The plan proposes a process of re-appropriation of those areas that may have lost part of their identity due to excessive tourism. Promoting local commerce, encouraging children's play, ensuring compliance with coexistence rules, reducing the size of terraces (as is done on La Rambla) or recovering the sale of products that are not for immediate consumption in La Boqueria are some of the strategies to return the use of large tourist corridors to citizens.
The goal is to make tourism a positive force in the city, part of the solution and not the problemThis management-focused model needs an extraordinary economic endowment,that allows it to simultaneously tackle the ambitious plan for High-Traffic Areas and finance public services that increase due to tourist pressure (cleaning, security, public space). For this reason, Barcelona has decided to increase to the maximum allowed by lawthe tourist stays tax and the surcharge, which will allow financing major projects for the recovery of the urban landscape, the commercial structure, and daily mobility.
The goal is to make tourism a positive force in the city, part of the solution and not the problem. Barcelona has designed a model focused on limits, redistribution, sustainability, and the recovery of public space in the most stressed areas. We are in a new stage based on complex and subtle management, reconciling tourist flows and urban dynamics, between visitors and residents, between the city that hosts and the city that lives.