Seville (Spain) and Pafos (Cyprus) are setting the standard in smart tourism and were awarded European Capitals of Smart Tourism 2023
To guarantee a smart experience visiting and living in Seville, the city implements a series of innovative smart tourism projects and strategies. The Seville Accessible app is a digital tool of the city to make the city’s celebrations and festivals accessible to everybody. This tool seeks to facilitate the transit of people who have some kind of functional diversity. To this end, 22,000 elements found in the urban fabric along 781 kilometers of routes have been analyzed. Subsequently, these elements have been integrated into a platform and captured on a map to provide a real image of the obstacles and peculiarities of each street in the city. It also includes information on accessibility inside public buildings.
Thus, the user only must download the application or open it on his computer. And, once the starting and ending point of their trip has been set, they can filter by indicating in the application the type of needs they have and the type of means of transport they are going to use to get around. The application will generate an itinerary adapted to your needs to facilitate your mobility around the city. Likewise, the application is a live tool, so it offers the possibility that users can communicate through this platform incidents detected on the journey and can proceed to update the information of the application itself to improve the user experience.
Seville is also working on data collection to apply the information obtained in decision-making and strategy design, both for public administrations and the private sector. This information, which is regularly updated, can be consulted in the Tourism Intelligence System (SIT), which has pioneering indicators for sustainable tourism worldwide. It also has a project to analyze the management of tourist flows in the Santa Cruz neighborhood, one of the most visited areas in the city. The first of the proposed challenges revolves around the decongestion of tourism in the historic center of the city, where the main heritage and cultural resources of Seville are concentrated. The impact of the visitor in the neighborhood has negative effects on the coexistence with the resident and that is why the Smart Tourism Office is developing a project that consists of decongesting and diversifying tourist flows to other parts of the city, causing not only the improvement of the quality of life of the neighbors, but also improving the experience of visitors, who can discover the “Seville more unknown” to enjoy the “Seville more famous” with more peace of mind.
The UNESCO Archaeological Park app is an exemplary measure implemented by Pafos to allow visitors to immerse themselves into the city’s rich history. This tool is filled with informative videos, audio guiding, infographics, 360 tours, accessible in multiple languages. In line with this Smart measure, Smart QR-coded signs have been set to replace static information signs throughout the city. This initiative offers the opportunity to share more dynamic and detailed information while eliminating visual pollution.
Another example of using digital tools to improve the city’s day-to-day life is Pafos’ Smart Parking Project. It aims to optimize the city’s parking management by informing app users of when and where to find free parking spaces to save time, fuel and pay online without hassle.
Best Practices from the 2023 European Capital of Smart Tourism competition – Learn from the smartest destinations
To find out more about other smart measures that cities put forward in their applications to become the first European Capitals of Smart Tourism, visit the initiative’s website or download the Best Practices 2023 Report here.