{"id":21388,"date":"2021-04-29T09:15:05","date_gmt":"2021-04-29T07:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cmi.es\/publicacion\/sustainable-tourism-in-the-madrid-region\/"},"modified":"2021-04-29T09:15:05","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T07:15:05","slug":"sustainable-tourism-in-the-madrid-region","status":"publish","type":"publicacion","link":"https:\/\/cmi.es\/en\/publicacion\/sustainable-tourism-in-the-madrid-region\/","title":{"rendered":"Sustainable tourism in the Madrid region"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few years ago nobody foresaw the damage the economy was about to suffer. It was in March 2020 that the WHO declared the pandemic we are still living through. Until then, the city of Madrid was a tourist destination of the first order, and tourism in Spain accounted for around 13% of GDP and of employment.<\/p>\n<p>During 2020, according to figures from the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), circumstances brought about an 18.5% fall in GDP. The decline in tourism represents losses of around 2.3 million jobs, which translates into some 190 billion euros.<\/p>\n<p>The halt to tourism from Germany and the United Kingdom, countries that supplied a large share of foreign tourism to Spain, has been reflected in the correlation between visitor numbers and the hotel sector.<\/p>\n<p>According to reports from the Alliance for Tourism Excellence (Exceltur), tourism in the Madrid region fell by 77.90% in 2020 compared with the previous year, implying a loss of more than 15 billion euros. The indirect impact, for its part, is calculated at 58.10% lower than the year before.<\/p>\n<p>This arid landscape shows the need for a determined commitment to the sector&#8217;s recovery. It should be seen as an opportunity for change \u2014 a restructuring of the Spanish tourism model in which the hotel sector, among others, takes in the current public health perspective while attending to the environmental factors that bear on the planet and on society, through the principle of economic efficiency.<\/p>\n<p>Growth in tourism must therefore make sustainable economic systems its central axis. The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) defines sustainable tourism as \u201c(\u2026) tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities (\u2026)\u201d. Harmony and convergence between these three dimensions will shape the development of CSR in this sector, as the guarantee of its survival and revival.<\/p>\n<p>In general terms, a first approach to sustainability through the triple bottom line in tourism businesses might be represented as follows:<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-11919\" src=\"https:\/\/cmi.es\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Captura-300x217.png.webp\" alt=\"the triple bottom line applied to tourism\" width=\"403\" height=\"292\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In the city of Madrid and across its region, putting this sustainable tourism into practice accelerated over the course of 2020. Some of the measures adopted, and of the impacts observed as a result of the pandemic, can be summarised as follows:<\/p>\n<p><b>Measures and impacts in the economic dimension<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Allocation of 50 million euros to the tourism recovery plan for the Madrid region.<\/li>\n<li>Encouragement of public\u2013private collaboration through a 152 million euro credit line with Avalmadrid, of which 44 million is earmarked for the hotel sector in the city of Madrid.<\/li>\n<li>Thirty million euros devoted to recovery and to positioning the city of Madrid in international markets.<\/li>\n<li>Energy efficiency to cut costs in the city of Madrid, by adjusting power to each establishment&#8217;s real demand and saving between 10% and 15% of the bill.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Measures and impacts in the social dimension<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Promotion of on-call hotels for guests left with long-term stays in the middle of the pandemic.<\/li>\n<li>The effect of economic measures in reducing the risk to roughly one million direct jobs, following a fall of more than 65% in tourism activity across the Madrid region.<\/li>\n<li>Transfers within Madrid to emergency centres for asylum seekers, both with and without symptoms (Villa de Vallecas and Juan Luis Vives in Vic\u00e1lvaro), though obliged to isolate (Arganda del Rey).<\/li>\n<li>The cold-weather campaign in Madrid, housing approximately 500 people across 30 day centres.<\/li>\n<li>Integrating visitors into their surroundings through a sustainable tourism grounded in the customs and traditions of the city of Madrid.<\/li>\n<li>Funding for 20 social projects from the proceeds of Madrid&#8217;s charity tapas route, where prices are set at a level the wider public can afford.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Measures and impacts in the environmental dimension<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Hotel eco-efficiency, offering guests services that reduce both resource use and environmental impact.<\/li>\n<li>Energy efficiency in Madrid&#8217;s hotel sector, by switching off lights and dimming those in the main public areas. This was another year in which the sector took part in Earth Hour.<\/li>\n<li>A five-year objective, for a more sustainable destination, of reducing the environmental impact of hotel activity through energy efficiency.<\/li>\n<li>Attention to certification for document destruction, through recycling and waste treatment days.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Dr Carmen Hernando Vivar, lecturer at CMI Business School on the Master&#8217;s in Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability and the Sustainable MBA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":3676,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"categorias-publicacion":[108],"class_list":["post-21388","publicacion","type-publicacion","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","categorias-publicacion-publications"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmi.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publicacion\/21388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmi.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publicacion"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmi.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/publicacion"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmi.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmi.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"categorias-publicacion","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmi.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categorias-publicacion?post=21388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}