By Pako Rodríguez, responsible for the tourism area, and Sandra Campos, a consultant specializing in tourism.
(Original publication in Spanish)

FiturNext is FITUR's Observatory of good practices in terms of tourism sustainability, whose objective is the identification, promotion and distinction of projects at a global level with a positive impact on the tourism sector.

The Observatory continues to grow and create its own space in the tourism sector. During this past FiturNext 2023 edition, more than 400 professionals have attended the stand during Fitur days to learn more about how tourism can contribute to the regeneration of the natural environment. For it, more than 200 international initiatives that work on this objective have been analyzed. From among them, and with the help of our Advisory Board, twelve finalists were selected and, subsequently, 3 winning initiatives were awarded: Plogging Tour, Wave of Change (Iberostar Group) and Green Pepper Travel. All of them showed a high rate of replicability as well as a high level of impact and environmental contribution.

During the three professional conferences, more than 20 dialogues, presentations, keynotes and round tables were held, with more than 40 speakers. These sessions were focused on various areas of the sector that contribute to leaving the natural environment better than it was before the tourist experience, both due to the participation of residents and visitors. In this way, spaces for debate and synergies were generated between attendees, experts and initiatives that confirmed the concept of replicability of good practices as a vehicle to achieve better tourism. In this link you can download our FiturNext 2023 report.

For its part, and during the sessions open to the public at Fitur, the Smart Tourism Hub workshop was held, which attracted 25 university students from different universities in the capital of Madrid. These students worked in groups for three hours with the Pentagrowth methodology of Ideas for Change, building different disruptive scenarios of the future of tourism. The group with the best idea was awarded with the Pentagrowth online training.

After all this, the new FiturNext 2024 challenge was launched on how tourism can contribute to territorial revitalization.

As a culmination of this edition, we will have a new FiturNext webinar on March 14 at 5:00 p.m. (CET), where we will have the winning initiatives and Alicia Montalvo, Climate Action and Positive Biodiversity Manager of CAF, Development Bank of America Latina, FiturNext ally. You can sign up through this link.

FiturNext Challenge 2024

The FiturNext 2024 Challenge focuses on the territories. Depopulation is a demographic and territorial phenomenon that refers to the aging and emptying of eminently rural spaces, caused by the massive exodus from these areas and the concentration of inhabitants in urban areas and close to them.

These emptied spaces, turned into "solitary areas" ("Aree interne" in Italian or "Udkantsdanmark" in Danish) suffer from a lack of basic local services, accessibility, mobility and connectivity, and generate the so-called "demothanasia", understood as the disappearance slow and silent movement of the population of a territory. This phenomenon not only worsens people's quality of life, it also contributes to the abandonment of crops, the desertification and acidification of territories, and the neglect of environments against fires.

According to the United Nations Organization, in 2018 55% of the world population lived in cities, a percentage that is estimated to increase by 70% by 2050. These cities consume 75% of energy resources and emit 80% of carbon that contaminates the environment, causing at the same time the saturation of spaces and services.

If we look at specific territories, the situation is even more extreme. In Europe, less than 30% of the inhabitants live in rural areas (which comprises 80% of the territory), while in America that figure is around 17%.

In Spain, rural areas extend over 84% of the territory -emptied Spain- (which is not empty, since it does not present a voluntarist component), although it is only the residence of 15.9% of the population. In fact, Spain is the fourth country in Europe with the highest number of municipalities at risk of depopulation. By way of example, we can cite the demographic density of the Nordic countries (4.9h/km²) or Finnish Lapland (1.8-2h/km²), which largely share the sociodemographic characteristics of the people of the Celtiberian Serranía ( 7h/km²) or the Celtic Strip (4.5h/km²), reaching enclaves with a density of 1h/km².

For all these reasons, the FiturNext Observatory launches the 2024 challenge in harmony with SDGs 8, 10 and 11, in order to find good practices that contribute to territorial balance and revitalization through tourism. SDG 8 revolves around the formation of policies for the conception of tourism that promotes employment and local consumption. For its part, SDG 10 is related to the reduction of inequalities and the generation of support for settlement in rural areas. Finally, SDG 11 highlights the importance of a balance between the rural and the urban, together with the need to promote the existence of sustainable communities and cities.

Register your initiative

To understand the positive effect of the different initiatives explored, we show 9 impact indicators that help measure their contribution to the challenge:

Growth of visitors: the increase in visitors to the territory is vital for the viability of the project and the start of territorial revitalization.
Increase in tourist services: the increase in visitors stimulates the creation of new tourist services that meet the needs of the growing demand.
Increase in connectivity: the growth of the two previous indicators leads to improvements in territorial connectivity, both at the level of transport or access and communications.
Number of new businesses created: the stimulation of demand entails the creation of new business offers that, without being tourism, contribute to satisfy the needs of the offer and, therefore, of the demand.
Commerce: all of the above entails an increase in commercial activities in the territory and its surrounding areas.
Employment: thanks to the increase in new services, companies, connectivity and commerce, the need for labor is generated, which is why the supply of jobs in the territory grows.
Population growth: the increase in the six previous indicators contributes to the attraction of population towards these spaces, increasing the number of inhabitants thereof.
Increase of children in the territory (annual ratio): with the growth of the population that comes from abroad, the population in the destination begins to increase naturally, increasing the number of children and young people in the destination and, with them, strengthening the future of the territory.
Increase in basic services (schools, health centers, pharmacies...): the growth of the territory's population and the generation of commercial activities, connectivity and employment, naturally generate an increase in basic services that cover the needs of the new population in safe and sustainable conditions.

FiturNext 2024 Call

You can now register your initiative focused on territorial revitalization. The term will be open until August 31, 2023.

The projects that go to the final will participate in the activities that will take place at our Fitur 2024 stand and subsequent actions and will benefit from the visibility provided by being part of the FiturNext community thanks to its impact in the media and the synergies created. among its participants.

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Sign up for the 2024 challenge

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