The Council of Europe opinion on the 2020 Stability Programme of Spain calls for targeted policy responses on tourism for not widening regional disparities and avoid a substantial risk of temporary unravelling of the convergence process between Member States.

Spain's recovery and resilience plan includes the creation of ad-hoc data infrastructure for the tourism sector. In order to ensure compliance milestones and targets, specific evidence and commitments are required for the time frame 2021-2027. The evidence required for the component 14 (Tourism).

 
The current statistical development and framework limits the possibility of any EU territory aligning with main EU flagship priorities, (as the Green deal, and the Tourism Transition Pathways), the SDGs and the Spain´s recovery and resilience plan.

We cannot assess the performance nor the impacts of the policies for example for climate action plans, assess the circularity of our tourism sector (water and waste indicators), impact on the quality of life of residents,…

This problem is common to many regions and DMOs in Europe. We need standard basic indicators for setting feasible targets, monitoring and benchmarking.

The European Commission Structural Reform Support Service for the tourism ecosystem: towards a more sustainable, resilient and digital tourism will offer measures to assist the sustainable and innovative recovery and development of tourism with improved evidence base and monitoring framework for the tourism ecosystem. It will develop and collect suitable indicators to steer and monitor the progress towards green and digital transition of European tourism.

This DG Reform Support Service, implemented with the support of the OECD, and through the NECSTouR ToT Lab will work on:
• The development of Definition of a joint methodology on sustainability within the framework of EU green deal and UN SDGs (expected for spring 2023),
• Aggregation of fragmented data,
• Developing pilots for implementing these monitoring tools (expected for December 2023) and
• Capacity building and exchange on best practices for DMOs on sustainable monitoring frameworks.