Por Pablo Arranz 
The City Council of Benidorm has already begun actions to promote its announced candidacy to become part of the International Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories (INSTO) of the World Tourism Organization (OMT). These are awareness and project dissemination actions for the ‘Improvement and implementation of sustainability systems and progress in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’.
These actions involve conducting up to 80 workshops in institutions, schools, institutes, or Vocational Training centers that are part of Benidorm’s roadmap for the year 2025. Among them, talks will be given to different groups, focusing on green energies, zero consumption, sustainable gastronomic activities, local satisfaction with tourism, economic benefits of the destination, seasonality and employment in tourism, water and wastewater management, solid waste management, etc., all linked to the Sustainable Development Goals.
Thus, workshops began last week that will be held in 13 schools in the city during the month of March, aimed at 5th and 6th-grade students.
In these workshops, under the name ‘Seeds of the Future’, students delve into the aforementioned concepts through talks and specific tasks. The objective is to raise awareness about the value of sustainable development aligned with the SDGs. For this reason, the mayor of Benidorm, Toni Pérez, visited the Miguel Hernández school this morning, where this activity was taking place.
The workshops are structured around three main themes: responsible consumption, equity and inclusion, and healthy habits and well-being of individuals. The sessions apply the methodologies of the 5Rs of sustainability: recycle, reduce, reuse, recover, and repair. “It promotes teamwork and critical thinking among students, encouraging them to find solutions within their reach to environmental and social problems, while fostering empathy and conflict resolution,” said the mayor.
These activities also aim to strengthen the tourism quality of the municipality through the training of sector companies. In this regard, various training meetings have been held, as well as improvement groups, with the business fabric that is part of the Integral System of Tourist Quality in Destinations (SICTED).
“These actions,” said the mayor, “are a key step in consolidating Benidorm as a world reference in quality and sustainable tourism.” All this is done with the aim of obtaining data and being able to carry out an initial diagnosis on the indicators that Benidorm is already implementing and how to enhance them to continue advancing in the application of the rest, as well as establishing strategic alliances with other supramunicipal administrations at the provincial, regional, national levels, and with other countries that are already part of INSTO.
Benidorm’s candidacy, within the program ‘Improvement and implementation of sustainability systems and progress in the SDGs’, endowed with 45,000 euros, is one of the latest actions of the Sustainable Tourism Plan in Destination ‘Benidorm DTI + Seguro’, jointly promoted by the Government of Spain, the Valencian Government, and the City Council of Benidorm to continue advancing in a secure, sustainable, and intelligent governance by boosting the tourism sector of Benidorm, with a total investment of over 2,950,000 euros.