Spain is a permanent member of the UNWTO Executive Council, co-chair of the UNWTO Committee on Statistics, member of the UNWTO Programme and Budget Committee, and member of the UNWTO Committee on Matters Related to Affiliate Membership.

Sustainable tourism development and enhancement of key tourism segments

One of the core principles of the Spain’s tourism policy is the preservation of natural and cultural values.

• Engaging in different initiatives of the One Planet Sustainable Tourism Programme:
  • Global Tourism Plastics Initiative unites the tourism sector behind a common vision to address the root causes of plastic pollution. It enables businesses, governments, and other tourism stakeholders to lead by example in the shift towards a circular economy of plastics.
  • Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism aims to raise the climate ambition of tourism stakeholders and secure strong actions to support the global commitment to have emissions by 2030 and reach Net Zero as soon as possible before 2050.
• Ongoing process of development of a new standard in tourism, materialized in the Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (MST), which takes into consideration the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of tourism.
• INSTO: Six members of the International Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories: Biscay, Málaga, Barcelona, Mallorca, Canary Islands, and Navarre.

Rural tourism

One of the core principles of the Spain’s tourism strategy is social benefit that implies the achievement of a sharing of benefits of the sector and challenges such as rural depopulation in Spain.

• The 7th Global Wine Tourism Conference will be held in Logroño, and the 8th UNWTO World Forum on Gastronomy Tourism will be held in Donostia – San Sebastián (both in Q4 2023). 
• UNWTO Rural Tourism Development Programme - Best Tourism Villages by UNWTO: In 2021, Lekunberri and Morella received the label, followed by Alquézar, Guadalupe and Rupit in 2022.

Innovation & Digital Transformation

National tourism policy aims at competitiveness and profitability of the sector, quality and accelerating the transformation process digital.

• Increasing participation in UNWTO Start-up Competitions, the world’s largest start-up competitions in tourism.
• Fostering participation in the UNWTO Digital Futures programme, that seeks to accelerate economic recovery of the tourism sector by scaling up innovative SMEs, unleashing digital technologies to create jobs and enhance future resilience in the linkages of the tourism value chain post COVID-19.
• Organization of Masterclasses focused on digital skills in collaboration with Amadeus, (better data analysis for better decision-making), Google and other global partners.

Sustainable Tourism Strategy 2030

The government of Spain, through the Secretariat of state of Tourism, is developing the strategy of sustainable tourism of Spain 2030, a national agenda of tourism for the challenges of the sector in the medium and long term, pushing the three pillars of sustainability: socio-economic, environmental, and territorial. For this, it has promoted a participatory process that involves the sector and the autonomous communities.

The Strategy proposes that tourism growth should be based on the following five principles:

• Socio-economic growth for which work must be done favoring the competitiveness and profitability of the sector, relying on quality, and accelerating the digital transformation.
• Preservation of natural and cultural values based on the conservation of the extensive cultural and natural heritage as a priority.
• Social benefit to achieve a distribution of the benefits within and beyond the sector, and face challenges such as the depopulation of rural areas in Spain.
• Participation and governance support, structuring mechanisms of participatory governance between the State and the competent administrations at all levels together with the tourism industry.
• Continued Adaption, given that it is not only a question of seeking quality and improvement, but also of enabling the sector to have the capacity to respond to the new environment of constant changes.
• Leadership, which seeks to consolidate Spain's role as a world leader in the sector

Strategic priorities: The Strategy sets the new government Agenda for the tourism sector through collaborative governance, sustainable growth, competitive transformation, tourism environment, enterprises and individuals, and tourism products, marketing and intelligence.