Smart Tourism Hospitality game is travelling to European partner cities
In the first week of February 2019, we facilitated our 3rd game session in sunny Valencia, Spain. Like in Darmstadt, this game session shared some similarities as both cities are still showing capacities for welcoming visitors. Valencia does not yet struggle with an over-crowded city centre and has some nice places to discover, such as the city of arts and sciences with the futuristic-looking museums, or the Valencia Cathedral.
In this game session, we followed a visitor growth strategy in which players had to plan hotel, transportation and attraction facilities for a growth scenario. Players did really well in terms of contributing to finding joint solutions that affect aspects like the economy, ecology or smart citizenship.
Participants reported great outcome of the game session. The game did not only contribute to a better understanding of the complexity of sustainable tourism, but enabled the players to take a different perspective on stakeholder collaboration. The informal game setting allowed them to test different scenarios, policies and ideas among city stakeholders, which was perceived as an innovative method. Stakeholders made trade-offs, negotiated, debated and collaborated on sustainable policy making to cater for tourism growth.
Among others, we thank Jaume Mata of Valencia Tourism who is one of the project partners, the Palacio de Congress, the Valencia City Council, the Municipal Transport Company (EMT), the Valencian Institute of Building (IVE) and FairBnB for playing with us. Our gratitude goes also to Palacio de Congress Valencia who hosted the workshop.
We would like to say thank you to the players, who engaged in fruitful discussions around growing tourism in Valencia and if it is sensible to accommodate more tourists.
Our next destination is Goteborg, Sweden. Looking forward to playing with you!