The Strategic Tourism Plan for 2020 sets out the road map for Barcelona’s tourist policies over the coming years, based on a participatory diagnosis. Its goal is to ensure the destination's sustainability, reconciling to the utmost all the elements at play and promoting the highest possible social return on tourist activities, where visitors’ expectations are met without any risk to the continued residence of those living in the city. More information: http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/turisme/en/strategic-plan

2. 123,000
REGULATED
ACCOMMODATION
PLACES
Barcelona is one of Europe's main tourist
destinations. Tourism has a direct impact on
the city’s everyday and economic activity and
needs to be integrated as yet another element
in the city's management.
OVER
30 MILLION
VISITORS/YEAR
8.7
IS THE SCORE
THAT TOURISTS
GIVE BARCELONA
37%
OF TOURISTS USE
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
17%
GROWTH IN
TOURIST DEMAND
(LAST 5 YEARS)
46%
OF TOURISTS
GET ABOUT ON FOOT
92.3%
OF THE CARBON FOOTPRINT
OF VISITORS IS GENERATED
BY AIR TRAVEL

3. The Strategic Tourism Plan for 2020 sets out
the road map for Barcelona’s tourist policies
over the coming years, based on a participatory
diagnosis. Its goal is to ensure the destination's
sustainability, reconciling to the utmost all
the elements at play and promoting the highest
possible social return on tourist activities, where
visitors’ expectations are met without any risk to
the continued residence of those living in the city.
The initiatives that need to be carried out have
been divided up into ten programmes that are
summarised below.

4. GOVERNANCE

5. 1
WE HAVE A PLAN FOR GOVERNING
TOURISM COLLECTIVELY
Barcelona receives over 30 million visitors every year, a reality
that means moving from a promotional strategy to another that
opts for a comprehensive management of tourism, publicly-led
and ensuring that tourist policies respond to the general
interests of the city.
Tourism requires a cross-cutting approach and a diverse range
of tools, projects and players involved; coordinating and
involving them are key to guaranteeing that the goals proposed
under the Strategic Tourism Plan for 2020 can be achieved.
Given the global challenges that tourism raises, we in
Barcelona wish to strengthen our ties with other cities and
destinations, to share experiences and embark on collective
projects that enable us to tackle these challenges.
Photography:IuObrador@1giiu

6. KNOWLEDGE

7. 2
WE HAVE A PLAN FOR GENERATING
AND DISSEMINATING KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge in the field of urban tourism is essential for
managing and taking decisions. We in Barcelona are only too
aware of its importance. Considerable effort has been made
to generate and publish a diverse range of information on
tourist activities and studies have been conducted analysing
economic impact, tourist profiles and public perceptions
of tourism, among other things.
This knowledge needs broadening on issues such as
environmental costs and quality of jobs in the sector,
and the public has to be provided with better information
on tourism. The Tourism Observatory will be coordinating
and spearheading this research.
Photography:EduardoMurTerrel@barcelonacitizen

8. DESTINATION BARCELONA

9. 3
WE HAVE A PLAN FOR PROMOTING
THE DESTINATION’S SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainability is a crucial element for destination Barcelona,
a goal that also aims to guarantee the competitiveness
of tourist activities, to avoid jeopardising the destination's future,
to improve the quality of urban life and to manage the impact
of tourist activity, ensuring social return and the territory’s
development.
The Strategic Plan understands sustainability from a broad
perspective: social, economic and environmental, setting out
a dynamic, welcoming, innovative and desirable destination
on a metropolitan scale. Promotion tools, conceived as another
management element, have to respond to these goals.
Photography:NoemyGalvez@noemygm

10. MOBILITY

11. 4
WE HAVE A PLAN FOR MANAGING
TOURIST MOBILITY
Tourist uses of mobility, along with tourist accommodation
and attractions, are one of the key aspects we propose to tackle.
We need to know our visitors’ reasons for staying here, their
journeys’ seasonal variations and duration, the means
of transport they use and their most frequent itineraries,
so we can rethink, manage and regulate the specific practices
of tourist mobility. The plan aims to put special emphasis on
knowledge and managing mobility in crowded spaces such
as Sagrada Família and Park Güell.
Photography:MartaLlorens@martallorbcn

12. ACCOMMODATION

13. 5
WE HAVE A PLAN TO ENSURE RESPONSIBLE
TOURIST ACCOMMODATION
Barcelona has recorded a sharp increase in tourist accommodation
offers over the last few years and the sudden appearance of new
types, raising new challenges for planning. The plan provides for
the launching of strategies that ensure tourist accommodation
has a better relationship with its environment, promote its social
and environmental responsibility and highlight good practices.
Approved under the framework of this strategy, the Special Urban
Development Plan for Tourist Accommodation (PEUAT) continues
to ensure social and economic balance in areas with greater
tourist pressure while putting the priority on maintaining
and attracting the resident population and preventing tourist
accommodation from replacing the residential use of properties.
It also provides for active policies for fighting illegality,
in collaboration with websites offering tourist accommodation,
as well as the creation of a mediation service to help local
residents and tourists staying in local accommodation live
side by side.
Photography:AlbertCastañé@xopet1969

14. MANAGING SPACES

15. 6
WE HAVE A PLAN FOR ENSURING
AN URBAN BALANCE
Tourist activities make intensive use of certain places
and neighbourhoods in the city and this has to be reconciled
with the city’s ongoing, everyday life.
These areas will see the implementation of a series
of measures and tools agreed to between all the public
and private players, who will intervene to reduce the pressure
created by large numbers of visitors and maintain the local
commercial network. Policies will be implemented to counteract
pressure on the property market.
We will be generating a new stable management model
for crowded spaces which applies improvements agreed to
between the various parties and creates wealth that is fairly
and sustainably distributed.
Photography:MiquelGarcía@somriualacamera

16. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

17. 7
WE HAVE A PLAN FOR REDISTRIBUTING
THE BENEFITS OF TOURISM
Ensuring the redistribution of the wealth brought by tourism
for the entire population is one of the goals of the Strategic
Plan. If we are to achieve that we need to take advantage
of the developmental potential of tourism as a lever for
launching other economic sectors, helping to strengthen
the territory’s production network and integrating tourist
activities into local economic development.
Initiatives are also needed for ensuring quality, inclusive,
innovative and competitive jobs in the tourist sector, such
as promoting establishments that create stable work
conditions or launching initiatives for training and providing
qualifications for the professionals providing services
to the tourist industry.
Photography:PolinaNagareva@fotopolly

18. COMMUNICATION AND WELCOME

19. 8
WE HAVE A PLAN TO MAKE
COMMUNICATION A KEY
TOURISM-MANAGEMENT TOOL
Tourists coming to Barcelona do so largely because of the way
we show them the city and its attractions. Having a good
communication strategy is essential if we are to make tourism
a sustainable and responsible activity that involves residents
and visitors alike.
We need to expand our narratives on destination Barcelona,
making them more diverse and dynamic in order to open up
the range of possibilities for visitors beyond the city's
crowd-pulling icons. We also need to coordinate the city’s
tourist-communication tools, so that they respond to the goal
of ensuring a sustainable destination.
The plan aims to have an impact on the information tourists
receive before their stay in the city and to strengthen exchange
channels before, during and after their stay.
Photography:AlbertoSegarra@pitusega

20. TAXES AND FUNDING

21. 9
WE HAVE A PLAN FOR COMPENSATING
THE IMPACT THAT TOURISM HAS
What does tourism cost Barcelona? What economic benefits
does it entail? The balance between costs and benefits has
to be calculated and analysed if we are to know what expense
tourism represents out of the municipal coffers and what
activities create more or less income and expenditure.
The plan provides for designing a tourist-tax investment and
funding plan, exploring other tax measures as management
tools and taxing activities that cause more externalities
and which affect daily life in the city: intense use of public
space, property pressure, environmental impact, among other
things. In short, this is about having more planning tools
at our disposal that also ensure a fairer redistribution.
Photography:RogerCodina@rogercodina86

22. REGULATION AND PLANNING

23. 10
WE HAVE A PLAN FOR THE REGULATIONS
TO SAFEGUARD THE RIGHT TO THE CITY
The plan strengthens resources for inspecting and pursuing
illegality, especially in the realm of accommodation,
and provides for reviewing urban-planning tools to tackle
the effects of tourist activities on the city, from metropolitan
to neighbourhood scales.
The last few years have seen the rise of completely new
phenomena linked to the city’s tourists uses, which current
byelaws do not cover. That is why they need to be changed
and new ones established where needed, such as economic
activities in spaces with greater volumes of visitors
or unregulated offers of accommodation.
Photography:GismetMehdiyev@gismetmehdiyev

24. See the full Strategic Tourism Plan 2020:
http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/turisme/en/strategic-plan