The Ajuntament de Sitges, through the Tourism Department, today presented the new Tourism Intelligence System (SIT) at the Meliá Sitges Hotel. This digital tool integrates data from different public and private sources to facilitate the monitoring of tourism activity and support decision-making based on up-to-date information. The project has been developed as part of the Sitges Sustainable Tourism Plans at Destination, funded through Next Generation European funds.
The SIT makes it possible to consult, in a single environment, information that was previously spread across different studies, tools and organisations. The platform combines its own data with third-party data and makes part of the information publicly available. Publicly accessible information includes hotel activity, tourist-use housing, data from tourist information offices, visitor profiles and trends in business and meetings tourism. It also incorporates data for internal use that can support municipal services in decision-making and activity planning.
The presentation event was attended by the Councillor for Tourism, Daniel Martínez Berdala; Montse Giró, Head of the Analysis and Training Unit – LABturisme at Barcelona Provincial Council; and Roger Comas and Jonatan Lucena, Business Director and Project Manager at Nexus Geographics, the company that developed the application. They shared examples of other ways in which data can be used to manage tourism destinations.
The councillor stated that “tourism is a highly dynamic activity and, in order to manage it properly, we need access to up-to-date and reliable information. The new Tourism Intelligence System allows us to bring this information together, link different datasets and gain a more accurate view of the tourism reality in Sitges.” Daniel Martínez Berdala added that “it is a tool that will help us plan better and make decisions that are more closely aligned with the needs of the destination, while also making part of this knowledge available to the public in order to promote more transparent tourism management.”
The system also makes it possible to link indicators, such as tourist tax revenue and the evolution of overnight stays, to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the destination. Information on tourist-use housing, for example, makes it possible to distinguish between registered accommodation and properties being marketed during a given period.
The new SIT has been developed with Nexus Geographics and is scalable and interoperable. It is therefore prepared to incorporate new sources of information that can continue to feed the system and make it increasingly comprehensive. The public section of the platform can be accessed through the Ajuntament de Sitges website via this link and, from Wednesday 7 onwards, through the new tourism website for professional audiences at www.sitgesanytime.com.