The Vice President and Councilor for Tourism, Lope Afonso, emphasizes that “the Island is advancing as a great tourist destination, hand in hand with technology, sustainability and responsibility”.
Turismo de Tenerife and the Instituto Tecnológico de Energías Renovables (ITER), both dependent on the Cabildo de Tenerife, have signed a collaboration agreement aimed at developing innovative projects aimed at improving competitiveness and sustainability in tourism.
Among the objectives of the agreement between Turismo de Tenerife and ITER are the promotion of innovation by taking advantage of the technical knowledge of ITER and the experience in tourism management of Turismo de Tenerife to develop technological solutions that improve the visitor experience and optimize the management of resources. Another objective is to boost the competitiveness of the destination through the development of joint projects that will enable Tenerife to position itself as a leading destination in innovation and sustainability. This includes the creation of specialized projects in tourism technology where new solutions can be tested in a controlled environment.
The Vice President and Councilor for Tourism of the Cabildo of Tenerife, Lope Afonso, points out that “this is a strategic agreement of two entities that are leaders in their different fields of action, in the technological field where ITER has been showing its capacity for years, and in the tourist management of the destination where Turismo de Tenerife is responsible for our island to continue being a competitive destination”. Afonso adds that “today we take an essential step, and Tenerife advances as a great tourist destination hand in hand with technology, sustainability and responsibility”.
The Councilor for Innovation, Research and Development, Juan José Martínez, comments that “ITER has many potentialities and we can give support from many lines. This agreement will help many companies and will serve to continue qualifying Tenerife as a tourist destination, and improving our capacity. We are committed to a more sustainable tourism”.
For the CEO of Turismo de Tenerife, Dimple Melwani, she emphasizes that “this collaboration seeks to promote innovation and facilitate the adoption of advanced and sustainable technologies, objectives that are common to both entities”. Melwani adds that “an alliance that will improve competitiveness and sustainability by optimizing the management of resources and promoting a smarter and more environmentally friendly tourism and improving the visitor experience”.
The CEO of ITER, Begoña Ortiz, highlights “the importance that Artificial Intelligence is going to have, both with the security of the data, as well as with the high energy consumption. We have the only Data Center in the Canary Islands and in Spain based 100% on renewable energy”.
The agreement also seeks to develop initiatives that integrate technological solutions with a sustainable approach, aligned with international standards such as the DTI methodologies of Segittur and Biosphere of the Responsible Tourism Institute. It also seeks to disseminate the knowledge and capacities generated in the local ecosystem, promoting public-private collaboration and strengthening the island’s business and social fabric around innovation and sustainable tourism.
All these objectives will take the form of actions and projects linked to the strategic plans recently launched by Turismo de Tenerife in areas such as digital transformation, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and intelligent management of the tourist destination.
Sandbox Smart Destination
One of the first projects that Turismo de Tenerife has launched related to innovation is the Sandbox Smart Destination (SSD), a controlled test space (sandbox) for testing innovations in the field of tourism based on artificial intelligence. Its objective is to allow experiments in the field of AI applied to tourism that may have some kind of regulatory limitation.
For Dimple Melwani, “artificial intelligence can play a crucial role in reducing environmental impact while analyzing large volumes of data that allow us to make intelligent decisions to optimize resources. In this sense, presenting the Sandbox Smart Destination, which in turn is the first tourist sandbox in Spain, is a great opportunity for the island”.
The SSD is open to any agent of the tourism innovation ecosystem: technology providers, tourism companies, universities, technology centers, research institutes. Projects will be selected that provide innovative solutions in products, services, processes or organizational methods (e.g., value chain management, human resources management), new business models, in which the application of tools based on artificial intelligence plays a major role. Solutions that are very close to the market and whose value proposition is clearly differentiated from existing solutions will be accepted. Also, the adequacy of the projects to the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as their economic and social impact, will be positively evaluated. Finally, the contribution of the solution to the creation of Tenerife as an inclusive and accessible tourist destination will be taken into account. The first call will be launched in the coming weeks. The companies that enter the Sandbox will agree with ITER to provide the necessary services.
Among the benefits that the companies participating in the Sandbox will be able to access is the preferential access to the storage resources of the Teide-HPC supercomputer of ITER, located in the D-Alix Data Center. This data center or DPC is unique in terms of sustainability, since it incorporates several energy efficiency measures, such as an air conditioning system that takes advantage of the sea temperature and a renewable energy production facility that allows reducing the datacenter consumption. This aspect, together with the fact that all of ITER’s energy consumption has been certified as coming from renewable sources, guarantees the Data Center’s sustainable nature.
For more information on the Sandbox: https://webtenerife.com/corporativa/sandbox/
