The Spanish company Guadaltel has been the winner of the CTA Challenge “Tourism #PostCOVID19” with its project Secure Destinations Dashboard, a platform to recommend, manage and promote safe tourist destinations in Andalusia. The project aims to be a solution for the reactivation of the tourism sector in the region after the COVID19 crisis.

The prize is €15,000 to run the pilot of this innovative project focused on the recovery of the tourism sector in the postCOVID19 context, which Guadaltel plans to develop in Torremolinos (Malaga, Spain), although its application, once tested, is intended to any tourist destination in Andalusia region.

The Guadaltel project has been awarded among a total of 57 proposals received by the CTA Challenge, an initiative launched by CTA in early May to stimulate innovative projects that help the recovery of one of the sectors most affected by the pandemic and security measures. The level of the proposals has been very high and the Guadaltel proposal has been the best valued, among other aspects, because it develops an information system not currently available, due to its global impact on the tourism sector as a trust-generating solution and because it is considered fully viable.

The project, in which the Institute for Tourism Intelligence and Innovation Research at the University of Malaga and the digital tourism agency Sextaplanta collaborate, develops a tool for tourism management and promotion that integrates, in a scorecard, tourist data with health and pandemic information to offer tourists an intelligent and safe tourist destination.

The tool will be useful both for public entities in charge of managing tourist destinations and for SMEs that offer tourist services, including travelers themselves.

Secure Destinations Dashboard includes, on the one hand, a recommender of safe destinations, in which the traveler will have data on any destination in Andalusia. Indicators of the percentage of compliance with security requirements, information on how the pandemic is evolving and socio-health data will be represented on a map of the region.

On the other hand, the tool also includes a dashboard for tourist destinations and SMEs, which will help them manage tourist information and the degree of compliance with security requirements. Thus, they will be able to offer information on the website to the tourist about the evolution of the pandemic, socio-health data, measures implemented, phase of the de-escalation in which it is located and activities allowed in it.

The winner of the project has been approved by the CTA Executive Committee, meeting electronically and which has also approved the financing of a R&D and innovation project of the Hispacold company, called ITERBUS CO2 and intended to carry out the conceptual design of air conditioning equipment for buses with a reversible heat pump, using CO2 as a refrigerant and its energy evaluation.

Dozens of innovative initiatives that could be applied to the tourism sector have been mobilized by the CTA Challengue “Tourism #PostCOVID19”. 77% of the proposals are led by Andalusian entities. National and international proposals (Israel, the Czech Republic and Romania) have also been received. The proposals have been presented mainly by companies (42 of them), followed by 13 entrepreneurs, a foundation and a technology centre.

Regarding the lines of innovation of the projects, they cover very diverse technologies and applications: solutions for automatic detection of people and capacity control both indoors and outdoors, for example a beach; technology to interact with personnel and services of a hotel without physical contact; augmented reality experiences and video games; technologies to facilitate accessibility for people with disabilities or different mechanisms and technologies that help maintain social distance.

There are also proposals to develop tourist information systems on health risk levels and associated route recommendations, portable disinfection systems, tourist connection platforms and the tourist and gastronomic offer, Big Data applications or solutions to manage smart tourist destinations, among many other proposals.