Last week, we held the first meeting of the new Council of Tourism Sitges. It is a new body promoted by the City Council, and has the presence and participation of all public and private entities charged with managing and planning local tourism. There are representatives of hotels, restaurants and bars; also representatives of campsites and apartments; the services of the beaches or marinas as well as the Heritage Association and the Garraf Park, among many others. The new Council compositions plural and multifaceted, because tourism today is transversal and needs planning from different areas, both public and private, including associations.
The Council of Tourism's mission is to plan the promotion policy of the city of Sitges and detail the actions and the line that interests the whole municipality, both from a global perspective as in specific sector-wise actions. In this regard, the Council will have working groups in different areas and among its objectives has conducted an ongoing dialogue with the public to obtain their concerns and proposals.
The triangle composed by public sector - private sector – community (residents of the municipality) is one of the foundations of the new Council of Tourism. The bilateral work that has distinguished tourism planning policies in recent decades has been replaced the new trilateral policies. In this sense, the new Council of Tourism was already designed from the very beginning along this line to adapt to new challenges. One of the first actions will be the Public hearing to present the Quality Tourism Plan 2017-2021, which will on 5 June. In this event, the public hearing will submit a strategic plan for tourism, for which we want a consensus among governments, private sector and citizens.
Tourism is the industry of Sitges. For over fifty years the town has been living from tourism, and during more than twenty tourism is the breadwinner for all year round, thanks to conferences and conventions, that allowed to break the seasonality that had prevailed decades ago. For this reason, the City Council has among its priorities promoting, planning and implementing structural actions to support this type of economy.
In this regard, the City Hall is implementing several actions, some properly oriented to tourism and other that do benefit tourism itself. On the first point, in recent years we have implemented actions such as the moratorium on the licensing to tourist apartments, minimarkets and other businesses that do not fit into the image that Sitges needs.; the regeneration of beaches (both bringing sand every summer as the stabilizer project in which we are working with the Ministry); promoting festivals to provide activities throughout the year (some organized directly with municipal participation, such as the brand new Gardens of Terramar, Sitges Next for advertising, or the Jazz and also Cinema, which this year celebrates its fiftieth edition); or the design and implementation of actions that have a direct impact on tourism (promotion campaign Sitges Viu ·Sitges Lives·, Salt Road, wine tourism ...).
For its part, the actions carried out by the municipal government that have a direct impact on tourism is the project of the Usage Plan, to finish in the coming months; actions to reduce illegal street vendors; premier cultural actions such as holding the exhibition Ramon Casas- that contribute to position Sitges as a cultural reference point and the new Architectural Heritage Plan, which aims to protect buildings that mark our uniqueness and identity.
Much remains to be done, but we are moving in the right direction, according to reports and evaluations prepared by experts who point that Sitges maintains its leading brand in the whole country. Employment data, organizations of events and initiatives that reach Sitges have multiplied in recent years and illustrate our potential and attraction we have in this moment. However, Sitges needs to be constantly in motion, generate new initiatives and act as a laboratory of ideas and proposals that mark tourism in the XXI century. And the brand new Council of Tourism is an excellent tool for making this possible.
