A reflection process involving a wide spectrum of citizens has been developed in order to identify the key challenges that the city will have to face in the coming years. It is also aimed at obtaining proposals on initiatives with a view to improving the alignment of the city and tourism in the framework of a responsible model. The process has actively engaged more than 130 participants from citizen organizations, companies and institutions concerned with tourism activity, as well as experts in the subject, and has been structured in three work sessions with a participatory format in order to facilitate the exchange and contrast of opinions among the participants:
- Session 1: Trends and impacts
- Session 2: Challenges and future key issues
- Session 3: Proposals to improve the alignment between city and tourism
We have developed the following tasks of the technical office for the project:
- Organizing and designing the strategic analysis process and the work sessions together with the commissioner and the Barcelona town council team from the tourism department
- Facilitating discussions and drafting the corresponding minutes and summary documents
- Supporting the final report, which was presented to the mayor of the city on 9 April 2015, within the framework of an extraordinary General Council on Tourism in Barcelona.
This project highlights the fact that gathering and getting the major actors involved in a particular subject (in this case the alignment between city and tourism) to work together is a very powerful tool to:
- Conduct a participatory analysis of the current situation and share the positive and negative impacts affecting the city
- Identify the challenges that must be faced.
- Develop a road map for the future, identifying proposals for actions.
- Spur shared knowledge, new ideas and new spaces for dialogue and cooperation.
- Allow contacts and establish links between actors who do not often meet.
In this particular case, with only 9 hours of effective work by the participants, a large number of ideas, proposals and enlightening discussions about the alignment between the city and its tourism have been generated, not least through the use of a methodology which allows to share and contrast ideas in a structured and efficient manner, within the framework of a structured strategic analysis.
