Shorouk Express
In this week’s Inside Spain we look at how one town wants to use AI to “personalise” tourists’ holidays, and how a proposal to limit foreigners from buying properties in Spain if they haven’t lived in the country for five years has been rejected.
AI is seeping into every walk of life, so it’s no surprise that it’s also starting to make its way into Spain’s tourism industry.
The coastal town of Benicassim in Castellón province, famous for its international music festival, will be the first place in Spain to use artificial intelligence to give holidaymakers tips.
Using the geolocation system of tourists’ mobile phones, Benicassim town hall will send messages to them informing them of sites, offers and services near them, from renting a jet ski to where to eat.
However, holidaymakers will first have to download an app, so they won’t receive the suggestions unless they want to.
The software will take into account their preferences and send them prompts based on this.
Monuments, museums, green spaces, eateries, transport options, hotels and so on, all will be covered by a technology that in the words of Benicassim authorities “will personalise the experience of tourists”.
In fact, 11 other municipalities in Castellón province in the coastal region of Valencia will also have similar AI geolocation services soon.
There are already travel companies such as Expedia and Kayak which offer users these virtual holiday assistants as well.
Advertisement
The popular holiday town of Benidorm is also looking to have an AI-assisted chatbot to improve communication and access to resources and services for residents and tourists.
So, like it or not, no doubt we’ll be seeing a lot more of AI in Spain’s tourism hotspots in the years to come.
Unfortunately, that may come with the more sinister side of AI, as part of Benicassim’s artificial intelligence deal also includes a video surveillance system based on Deep Learning technologies which features facial recognition, people counting, and movement speed.
For example, it can detect if a car is driving in the wrong direction, if a group of people enters a restricted area, or if the capacity of a venue is exceeded.
In other news, Spain’s Congressional Housing Committee on Thursday rejected a recent proposal to prevent foreigners from buying property in Spain if they can’t prove that they’ve lived in the country for at least five years.
The proposal, presented by Catalan party ERC, only received the support from the Spanish government’s hard-left junior coalition partner Sumar, while Spain’s ruling Socialists abstained.
Incidentally, far-right party Vox expressed its “interest for any initiative aimed at limiting foreign property demand in all areas, including the purchasing of homes, which drives people from their homes and neighbourhoods, displaces the population and causes speculation”, but ultimately they considered the proposal wasn’t far-reaching enough.
ERC wants the regional governments of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities to have the powers to apply restrictions on foreign buyers, even if they are residents.
They proposed a regional authorisation system whereby foreigners planning to buy a home in Spain would first have to prove their eligibility by applying for a permit from the housing department of the region where the property is located.
The criteria for this would be first proving five years of continuous residence in the country.
Advertisement
This represented the first time that a political party in Spain has suggested that actual foreign residents in Spain be limited from buying homes in Spain whereas prior proposals applied only to non-EU non-residents.
Were such a measure to be passed, it would mean that temporary residents in Spain (those who’ve resided in Spain for under five years) would potentially be barred from buying homes in the country.
In mid-January, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez made international headlines when he announced that his government was considering either a supertax on non-resident non-EU property buyers, or completely preventing them from buying Spanish homes, unless they can prove links to Spain.
All of the above proposals have been suggested as ways to alleviate the country’s housing crisis.
It is yet to be seen if either of Sánchez’s measures will make it through the Congress and Senate before actually coming into force.
