The City Council and the University of Malaga (UMA) have opened to the participation the elaboration of the future Strategic Tourism Plan with the first meeting of the working groups with representatives of the sector, as well as of the municipal political groups. The mayor, Ángeles Muñoz, who together with the dean of the Faculty of Tourism, Antonio Guevara, has made known to the members of the four thematic tables the data of the first diagnosis, has emphasized that the city has a “very good online reputation ”of 4.26 out of 5 points, according to the TripAdvisor portal scale. “We are perceived as a great destination and that places us in a magnificent starting point”, has valued the first mayor, who has pointed out that the objective of the document is “not to stop positioning ourselves before the new trends that are emerging after the pandemic ”.
The councilor recalled that the Government team signed an agreement last April with the Faculty of Tourism and the University Institute for Research on Intelligence and Tourism Innovation “to carry out a diagnosis of the current circumstances and establish an action plan, with measures to short and medium term, hand in hand with the entire sector ”. In this sense, he has underlined the importance that, after the field work carried out by the experts, the participatory roundtables start “to move forward and jointly, from the administration and the private initiative, new strategies.” “I hope that in the coming months we will continue to have refined and adjusted data on the current reality,” Muñoz has abounded, who has stressed that the document “will be a strategic plan for Marbella for the city, hence it is essential that they participate as much as possible level in the working groups the representatives of all the sectors ”.
For his part, the dean of the Facultud of Tourism has stated that “today is an important day because from the beginning it is a participatory project and we put all the elements that we have detected on the table”. At this point, he referred to the fact that Marbella “is quite positioned in segments such as sun and beach, luxury, gastronomy, golf or sports”, while clarifying that “it has many potentialities and more travel in the MICE segment (meetings and events) or of a nature related to Sierra Blanca ”. “In the analysis, different segments appear that are very important and a very positioned brand,” he indicated, while advocating the importance of “staying in those sectors but starting another journey and attracting other types of visitors taking advantage of the new challenges after the pandemic, like nature or digitization ”.
Regarding the calendar of the strategic plan, he has detailed that after the first meeting held today, in which the members have made their contributions on the initial diagnosis and the weaknesses and strengths detected, a second meeting will take place within a month “where it will be raised a new analysis and a series of proposals will be presented that will be validated with all the participants ”. The forecast is that the document, with the action plans for each segment for the next four years, will be ready by the end of October. “The City Council has made a very brave bet because, being participatory, the sector will feel identified with the plan and it will last over time,” he added.