For decades, tourism has been analyzed and managed as an industry. It has been and is an economic and social engine for Spain that represents more than 12.7% of GDP and generates almost 3 million jobs. For the city of Barcelona, it is equally very relevant: according to 2025 data, the city received 16 million tourists, although if we add the total number of tourists in the metropolitan region —the Barcelona Destination— the figure reaches 26 million tourists, according to the Barcelona Tourism Observatory. All this with a direct economic impact estimated at 14,041 million euros, about 10,376 million in the city of Barcelona and 3,665 million in the rest of the metropolitan region.
But tourism, or what would better define it, the visitor economy is much more than an industry that cannot be measured or valued solely with economic data. Its contribution to progress, as well as the impact on society as a whole and on the territory, goes beyond the sector itself and extends to the socio-convivial and institutional environment. Tourism is often blamed for many of the problems facing urban management. A simplification that highlights the limitations of our current governance. Tourism is not the origin of the problems of the housing crisis, mobility, or the climate crisis, but it is an accelerator for some, making it relatively easy to direct the frustration of our shortcomings and incapacities towards the sector.
To date, the success of tourist destinations was measured by the number of visitors, overnight stays, tourist spending, or contribution to GDP, but all this has become obsolete. The saturation of urban spaces, pressure on natural resources, tensions in access to housing, loss of cultural identity, or conflicts between residents and visitors show that tourism cannot continue to be understood solely as an economic value chain. The question is no longer just how much tourism we want or can absorb, but what role we want the visitor economy to play in building competitive, sustainable, equitable, resilient, and livable territories. To do this, we must stop considering tourism as an industry and start understanding and studying it as a complex system of relationships.
Tourism connects mobility, commerce, culture, employment, housing, heritage, energy, water, governance, and social cohesion. Every decision we make in any of these areas has effects and impacts on the rest and can generate imbalances and contradictions that go beyond economic logic and statistics and manifest themselves as discomfort in the territory and in society. That is why the visitor economy must be managed from an integral perspective as a powerful tool for territorial regeneration, but it requires much more sophisticated and inclusive governance.
Managing the Barcelona destination, or any other tourist destination, requires balancing interests, redistributing benefits, protecting local identities, and strengthening the relationship between the community, institutions, and the territory. A new paradigm that demands a profound methodological transformation. Tourism cannot be managed solely with sector actors; it is necessary to learn to work with a new cartography of relationships. The true value of the visitor economy does not lie in its economic or social impact but in the connections it builds in the territory and the quality of the relationships it is capable of weaving.
This vision also forces us to review the indicators we use to measure the success of tourism and evaluate the global impact of the visitor economy. Many advocate for replacing the logic of growth by introducing social or environmental carrying capacity criteria and measuring its contribution based on net territorial value. The question is no longer how much tourism contributes to the economy, but how much value it generates for the entire territory and community, placing sustainable development, well-being, and resilience as fundamental indicators of progress.
All this requires, however, new forms of governance and a new language in which the territory, the community, and the concept of citizenship are placed at the center, because all transformation begins with the use of language. The words we use condition our way of interpreting the world, and talking about tourism exclusively anchors us to a mental framework and a way of acting more typical of the 20th century than of the 21st century. The visitor economy is a broader, more complex, and inclusive term. On the one hand, it empowers the territory and the community as hosts, placing them at the center of tourism design, management, and experience to actively participate in decisions that affect their territory. On the other hand, it allows us to jointly define the visitor we want to attract as a priority, who is not the one who spends the most but the one who enjoys and takes care of the destination regardless of income level. The more they spend, the better, but the goal must be to appreciate and respect the identity of the destination, the tangible and intangible heritage, and the natural environment, becoming an accidental citizen with rights and responsibilities.
This new form of governance of the visitor economy can no longer be limited to timid consultative processes; we must incorporate real mechanisms of participation, co-responsibility, and shared decision-making. The much-touted tourism sustainability cannot be built without social legitimacy, so we must move from the governance of the tourism industry to a more sophisticated one based on a territorial tourism system, which is much more than a semantic issue. It is a new way of understanding the relationship between tourism, territory, and community.
A good example of the complexity we face is the case of the city of Barcelona. We all advocate for a competitive, sustainable, and equitable visitor economy, but we run the risk of dying from success. Given the current pressure of tourist overcrowding that erodes the way of life and coexistence between visitors and residents in the city, institutions are trying to take measures to limit or mitigate its negative impact. However, the magnitude of the challenge overwhelms us and will require the construction of new coherences. According to the projection of demographic data worldwide, global middle classes will increase in the coming decades from 3.5 billion people to 5 billion, mostly from Asian countries. And middle classes like to travel, just like we do.
Barcelona has just projected itself to the world with one of the most brilliant and emotional spectacles of recent decades, the blessing of the Tower of Jesus Christ by Pope Leo XIV. A global impact event accompanied by a light, music, drone, and fireworks show that has projected and emotionally reconnected Barcelona with the world. One does not need to be an expert to foresee that Barcelona will be one of the most desired destinations for urban tourism of global urban classes and especially for Asian cultural tourism. As the popular saying goes... "if you don't want soup... two bowls."
Those who think that tourism management can be solved with a few measures here and a few tweaks there, or as reflected in the delightful book of The Leopard, pretending to make profound changes so that, in reality, everything remains the same, condemn us to a new crisis of trust between citizens and the territory with a strategic sector. We must connect the future of tourism with coherence and meaning to the concept of City 5.0, one in which economic, human, social, and cultural dynamics are not built or designed by a few, but are generated thanks to the coexistence and interaction between people, residents and visitors, to constitute a true community of destination.
A Smart City is not one that deploys megabytes, sensors, automated processes or algorithms, but one that puts all of this at the service of shared human well-being. And in this area, metropolitan Barcelona and Catalonia have before us the challenge of demonstrating our capacity to convert the visitor economy into a true dynamic and complex territorial management system to advance territorial cohesion, environmental regeneration and collective prosperity. The longer we take to get to work on building new coherent and efficient governance, the more complex the challenge will be.