Sevilla – 2023 European Capital of Smart Tourism

(Source: quanjing.com)

Sevilla is the capital of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia, and the fourth-largest metropolis in Spain. A city rich in history and tradition, Sevilla is home to three UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

European reference of successful strategic partnership

Sevilla has become a hub for tourism innovation and business development thanks to an integrated vision that combines infrastructure, public and private initiatives, and international events. The city has spaces for entrepreneurship and the promotion of creative cultural industries and is home to Andalucia Media Alliance (AMA), the main cluster of creative and cultural industries in the audiovisual sector in Andalucía. AMA, a private non-profit entity, is a business accelerator dedicated to industrial research and the transfer of technological knowledge in the TIME (telecom, internet, media, and entertainment) sector. Other examples of strategic partnerships are Vodafone´s Sevilla Lab for Smart Cities, designed to provide transparency to public bodies by combining analytical capabilities with the integration of multiple data sources and industry 4.0, and the Tourism Innovation Summit, the largest international event dedicated to innovation applied to tourism that will be based in Sevilla until 2030.

Leading the fight against climate change

As one of the most threatened cities by global warming, Sevilla has a comprehensive medium and long-term vision to become a climate-neutral city in 2030 and tourism is aligned with this vision through the Sevilla Tourism Plan and the Tourism Sustainability Plans. The city launched ground-breaking projects to achieve climate neutrality, based on bioclimatic and healthy parameters from the traditional architecture (use of plants, water, materials, etc.) and technological innovation. Through Horizonte Sevilla Inteligente, the city has converted 264 public buildings into smart and energy-sustainable buildings (EUR 5 million investment) and is working on state-of-the-art solutions to deal with high temperatures, in both public space and public buildings by the means of the LIFE WATERCOOL project. Similarly, Sevilla is investing in low-emission transport systems and high-capacity bus lines and the Sevilla Smart Tourism Office is leading sustainable urban tourism development initiatives such as Sustainable Urban Tourism Lab, a social and urban innovation laboratory organised around missions to address challenges of Shared Sevilla and post-pandemic tourism, and SmartSpace, an incubator for entrepreneurship and a space for training in sustainable urban tourism.

Technology and innovation in the service of public

Sevilla has implemented projects such as “Sevilla Smart Accessibility Tourist & Events” to improve accessibility and urban space management through ICT-based actions (GIS technology and AI tools) analysing and processing all information by establishing corrective actions and designing accessible routes between neighbourhoods, all of which is available for users through the Sevilla Accessible App. Likewise, the city has boosted total connectivity in areas of abundant tourist influx, and sensorisation of public buildings (Cultural Interest Goods, Museums, Hotels, Transport Infrastructure, etc) as IoT nodes (Internet of Things) that contribute all the information to the City Platform. Sevilla is leader in the development of FIWARE, the public and open platform for the development of applications and internet services powered by the EU. Based on the FIWARE technology, in 2016, Sevilla launched its open data portal and the Smart Tourist System, which combines, analyses, publishes, and extracts significant information from the tourist destination and generates predictive analysis for decision making. Similarly, the city has adapted some of its most popular and economic impactful events with special accessibility measures that integrate maps, routes, and signage, as well as security cameras for transit control and incident detection, lighting control system and AI tools for security management integrated into the city platform, to reduce the risk of incidents during major events.