Calvia, which five years ago joined the network of Smart Tourism Destinations, is to be the first municipality in Mallorca to seek effective control of beach capacities.
Cameras with analytical algorithms will allow the town hall to know the number of people and density on beaches in Palmanova, Magalluf, Santa Ponsa and Paguera. The data will be integrated into the Smart Calvia platform and the town hall's tourism website. It will be possible, for example, to consult occupancy of beaches via a chatbot.
While the town hall refers to control of capacities, this isn't a means of stopping people going to beaches, rather a system to inform not dissimilar to what happened during the pandemic when there were defined capacity limits for social distancing purposes.
Above all, this is an application for management of tourist flows, a key objective for a Smart Tourism Destination. Last week, the town hall set up a Smart Office to implement all the relevant data associated with being such a destination.
As well as the beach capacities, there will, for instance, be general analysis of tourist flows through studies of anonymous data from phones. This will give a better understanding of the flows through hotel reservations or estimates and also of influxes of people in different areas of the municipality.
The Spanish government's Smart Tourism Destinations project promotes the digital transformation of the country's tourism areas and destinations. The aim is to stimulate the sustainable development of tourism and ensure tourist satisfaction as well as improving living conditions for local people.