A new edition of ForumTurisTIC organized by Eurecat, in collaboration with Ajuntament de Barcelona, Diputació de Barcelona, Agència Catalana de Turisme, and Direcció General de Turisme, took place last October 3rd at the Paranimf from the Industrial School of Barcelona.

This year's edition, under the motto "The Superpower of Tourism in the conservation of the planet", was presented by Francesc Mauri and had several speakers with sustainability projects applied to tourism, as well as entities and research centers that they work for the conservation of the territory, economic and social sustainability.

Our president, Ingrid Graells, had the honor of participating in the round table "Data spaces: the superpower of digital transformation", where she was able to share the vision of the Tech Tourism Cluster in relation to how technology and in particular , the use of data, is transforming the tourism sector.



Her intervention was key to exposing the value of data sharing in order to create new collaboration models, as well as what are the challenges facing companies that work with them, such as security and trust. Thus, he highlighted the importance of European initiatives in order to create safe data spaces. 



She also commented that SMEs and micro-SMEs in Catalonia need specific training in order to use data effectively and implement advanced solutions in data analysis.

At the same time, he set out some of the key strategies for the 'traveltech' sector:

- Training and digital training, as it is necessary for companies to invest in training their teams so that they use new technologies correctly and can take full advantage of the power of data.

- Adaptation to a more sustainable tourism, since this data can help to obtain solutions that help reduce the environmental impact of tourism, as is being worked on from the Tech Tourism Cluster through the National Commitment for Responsible Tourism.

- Innovation and flexibility so that companies can adapt more quickly to changes, since technology allows innovation to be promoted with less risk.



Ingrid Graells concluded her speech by talking about the importance of strategic collaborations in order to ensure the competitiveness of the Catalan tourism sector, using as an example the collaboration between Huawei Cloud and the Tech Tourism Cluster, which was recently have united to continue working on this commitment and which will allow local companies to access cutting-edge technologies.