The Barcelona Declaration and Memorandum

The International Conference "Sustainable Tourism in the framework of the New Urban Agenda", held on 18 and 19 May in Barcelona resulted in the Barcelona Declaration and Memorandum.

biosphere barcelona

Barcelona hosted last 18 and 19 May, the International Conference "Sustainable Tourism within the framework of the New Urban Agenda" at the Pompeu Fabra University. The Conference was undoubtedly one of the biggest events of the year, which brought together the main players in sustainable tourism in search of a new impetus to move towards their goals.

During the Conference, the "Barcelona Declaration" and the "Barcelona Memorandum" were adopted. With both documents, the aim is to seek a Sustainable Development of urban destinations as an integrative process that includes public authorities of the destination, citizenship, their companies and services, and the mechanisms for promoting destination and communication with tourists. The goal of the Declaration and Memorandum is therefore to guide the tourism actions and policies of a destination towards sustainable development, as well as to generate synergies between local companies that favor the development of sustainable experiences and products, positioning the destination and its companies in the tourism market in a responsable way.

Moving towards the development of sustainable urban destinations is a process of shared responsibility. Actors in sustainable tourism cities share the responsibility of maintaining the destination as a vibrant and prosperous place to live and visit. It is therefore essential to ensure that tourism destination governance includes all stakeholders, especially at local level, and that the roles and responsibilities of each are clearly defined.

Sustainable tourism is not a static state that is achieved, but a path of continuous improvement that must be moved towards. To this end, the tools and processes that allow to clear this path to sustainability in all the areas of the Destination must be generated.

To download the Barcelona Declaration, click here: BARCELONA DECLARATION - BUILDING SUSTAINABLE TOURISM IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE NEW URBAN AGENDA

To download the Barcelona Memorandum, click here: MEMORANDUM OF BARCELONA - THE PROCESS TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE URBAN DESTINATIONS IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE NEW URBAN AGENDA