EU tourism ministers committed themselves to supporting the social sustainability of tourism in the EU by signing the ‘Palma Declaration’ on Tuesday 31 October during their informal meeting in Mallorca (see EUROPE 13282/16).
“The idea is to move forward together towards a new sustainable model for tourism, one that is greener, more digital, more inclusive, more resilient, and one that will also enable us to adapt and face up to future challenges”, explained Rosana Morillo, Spain’s acting Secretary of State for Tourism, during the press conference following the meeting.
With this declaration, the Member States underlined “their desire to encourage the competitiveness of European businesses and a favourable environment for development in this sector”. They also want to pay more attention to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and to rural, outermost, isolated and less densely populated regions.
At the press conference, Hubert Martin Gambs, Deputy Director-General of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW), pointed out that the tourism ecosystem had been hit very hard by the pandemic. “[B]ut it is on its way to recovery, with encouraging figures for 2023”, he added. The first half of 2023 was a record year, with 1.2 billion overnight stays reserved in tourist accommodation in the EU.
“Keeping in mind the ageing population in the EU, investing in accessible tourism infrastructure can be beneficial for the ecosystem, as it also supports more off-season tourism”, he argued.
He also announced that the Member States had welcomed the Commission’s plan to create a European data space for tourism.
Read the statement: https://aeur.eu/f/9ch (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)