- Technical staff and councillors from the two councils, immersed in the implementation of action plans financed by European funds, meet to share experiences and create synergies on the road to smart and sustainable tourism.
Last week, councillors and technicians from El Poble Nou de Benitatxell Council who are involved in the Tourism Sustainability Plan for Destinations (PSTD) held a meeting in Altea to share experiences and create synergies on the road to smart and sustainable tourism.
The Council of El Poble Nou de Benitatxell has recently received 2,441,513 euros from the Plan for Recovery, Transformation and Resilience (PRTR) funded by the European Union, which is intended to carry out actions focused on achieving a smart and more sustainable tourism in the municipality. Altea, for its part, is a leading destination in terms of Smart Destinations, as well as sustainability. It is currently executing a PSTD of almost four million euros, co-financed by the Ministry, the Generalitat and the council itself, which will make Altea a model to follow.
For Benitatxell, this subsidy is a great opportunity to carry out actions that, due to the size of the municipality, would be unthinkable with its own funds. As Víctor Bisquert, councillor of Tourism, explained, ‘these investments will mean a leap in quality, not only in the conditions of the spaces and services that Benitatxell offers to visitors, but also to the citizens, who will see improvements in important areas such as water management or waste collection’.
‘Thanks to this subsidy we will install the necessary technology to optimise the resources available to us, which will allow us to make our town a more sustainable place, not only in terms of tourism. The improvements will be seen in the daily life of the whole neighbourhood and will mean improvements in areas such as transport and communications,’ added Javi Cabrera, councillor of New Technologies of Benitatxell.
In words of Germán Manjón, Councillor of New Technologies of Altea Council: ‘We believe that collaboration is very important between similar municipalities that, far from being in competition, we can contribute experiences that, due to the characteristics of our destinations, we can share. In this sense, for us it is a pleasure to be able to serve as support to neighbouring municipalities that are at the time of starting the path towards achieving the Smart Tourist Destination (DTI) label or that are working for a more sustainable tourism through processes that we have already experienced’.
The meeting between the two towns in Alicante was brought about by the management of the two aforementioned Plans, which is carried out by the Valencian company Xelus It. As Iván Martí, manager of Altea’s PSTD, commented: ‘We thought it was a great opportunity to bring together the two towns to share ideas, actions, concerns…. For a small municipality like Benitatxell, which is starting on this path of the DTI, it is motivating to see how destinations as referential as Altea that started like them are now with the same concerns, and that with the involvement and work of all the agents involved the results will come’.