Tourism workshop at the III Latin American LED Forum

ORU Fogar and the Diputació de Barcelona, organized the Workshop "Sustainable tourism as a tool for development" in Barranquilla in the framework of the III Forum of Local Economic Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, on 8 and 9 May. Aimed at representatives of public administrations attending the Forum, the workshop was attended by Patricio Azcárate, president of the Institute of Responsible Tourism, and Vanesa Mas, head of the Territorial Management Unit of the Technical Office of Tourism of Diiputació de Barcelona.

In the presentation of the workshop, Carles Llorens, secretary general of ORU Fogar, explained that they had decided to promote the workshop after the achievement of the Gold Biosphere Certificate by the Diputació de Barcelona, as an opportunity to explain a successful tourism policy and the Catalan experience of managing many millions of tourists annually. Llorens stated that the LED Forums should include more tourism, as a resource for local development "because all territories have some uniqueness to show, something that at a cultural, landscape or social level may be of interest to tourism”.

Patricio Azcárate explained how the Institute of Responsible Tourism grants Biosphere certifications to destinations, as well as to hotels and tourism companies that respect the premises of Responsible Tourism contained in the "World Charter for Sustainable Tourism +20" proclaimed at the World Summit on Sustainable Tourism sponsored by UNESCO, UNWTO and COP21. Azcárate stressed that tourism affects almost all SDG.

Vanesa Mas talked about the process of involvement of the Diputació de Barcelona in the Biosphere process, in the framework of a process of reinvention of its tourist brand, in which beyond the promotion of the destination, all the policies of an institution are involved, in a more transversal formulation. He highlighted the involvement of all the territorial, social and cultural agents in the process, and did not avoid referring to the problem of the saturation of tourism in a city like Barcelona. At the moment, our tourism policy," explained Mas, "is based on the premise that 'the best places to live are the most worth visiting'.

After the workshop, Patricio Azcárate and Vanesa Mas held B2B meetings with different governments, regions and municipalities present at the Forum.