The Deputación de Pontevedra will publish in May their first analysis study aimed at forecasting the impact of COVID-19 on tourism
The Deputación de Pontevedra is one of the first provincial governments in Spain to commission an analysis study on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism so as to have “a precise diagnosis with relevant trends and data”. This will allow for a safe and accurate assessment of the situation in order to take the best decisions “concerning a sector that has probably been the first to suffer the consequences of this crisis and may be one of the last to recover from it”.
The President of the Deputación de Pontevedra, Carmela Silva, covered this in-depth exhaustive analysis at the meeting of the COVID-19 Monitoring Committee. The diagnosis will be confirmed this month and, according to the President, “it will be at our disposal on the first days of May. We want to know the trends in the tourism sector in the short to medium term to be able to redirect as soon as possible our model for the province”, she added.
In the same vein, President Silva also informed of the upcoming drafting of a new Tourism Strategic Plan for the province of Pontevedra. “It was scheduled for 2021, as the current plan does not finish until December of this year, but we are forced to plan ahead and develop actions to face what will certainly be a new scenario”.
Carmela Silva remarked that it was essential for all the administrations to work together and announced that she will convene a meeting of the Provincial Tourism Board (Mesa Provincial de Turismo) next Thursday. “We need to work together to be able to implement actions. In fact, we held an online meeting with the National Network of Smart Tourist Destinations (Red de Destinos Inteligentes de España) along these lines, and on Thursday we will gather the Mesa Provincial, having already summoned the sector—councils, geodestinations, representatives of the Vigo Airport and the Xunta de Galicia (the Regional Government of Galicia) to take decisions”. Regarding that, President Silva thanked the Regional Tourism Minister of the Xunta de Galicia “for answering the call that the Deputación de Pontevedra made on April 3rd to gather all Galician destinations and for summoning us tomorrow for a meeting with the regional governing board”.
Silva: "With the cooperation of the public and private sectors, we will be stronger than before"
President Silva expressed again her concern about “a sector having so much weight in our province, especially given that we had experimented an exponential growth and are a very well positioned tourism destination. We don’t want to lose that. That is why the governments have to be very active. I am positive that we will emerge together from this crisis and, with the cooperation of the public and private sectors, we will be stronger than before”.
Beside these meetings, the Deputación de Pontevedra will increase even more its number of activities; among them, increasing the number of editions per year of the accelerator of tourist companies, aimed at bringing ICT to more businesses. It will also boost training to be awarded the Integrated Quality Spanish Tourist Destination (SICTED) enterprises—more than 100 businesses followed the online training courses to obtain or renew this certification.
Furthermore, new initiatives are being developed, such as “Travel tomorrow” and “21 days, 21 destinations” campaigns, which are making an impact on social media, or nature tourism proposals like “Birds from home”.
In short, this institution provides regular information about the coastal and inland areas of the Pontevedra Provincia tourism destination on the websites Deputación de Pontevedra and Turismo Rías Baixas. To sum up, Carmela Silva declared that “Today, we are at home, but we have to work for the day we can get out, so as to be fully ready to tell people that they can come back and that we are a safe, healthy destination, with our usual diversity and beauty”.
