International experts were at the end of last week at the Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR), in Faro, to help the Algarve set up a Smart Specialization strategy for the future, at a meeting held within the framework of the European platform S3 (S to the cube).
An event focused on the Tourism sector, the main industry in the region, but whose objective was to find ways to extend the value creation chain in the Algarve.
The CCDR in the Algarve is close to completing its strategy for the region for the years to come and finding a way to differentiate itself is one of the requirements of the European Union, in the Community Support Framework that starts in 2014. «We think that, at the most, next month, there will already be an almost final version of the strategy», he revealed to Sul Informação the president of the CCDR of the Algarve David Santos.
The initiative was very oriented towards closed working sessions, between the invited experts and public and private actors in the region, but also included a moment focused on the outside, the seminar «Smart Tourism and Specialization», which took place on Thursday to evening. Here, it was possible to know some success stories of “Smart Specialization” linked to Tourism.
The diversification of economic activities in the region, using tourism as an engine, is an objective that has been talked about a lot, without ever having been able to find an effective strategy to achieve it. At the moment, finding a smart Specialization “is a community imperative”.
“We managed to get the [EU] S3 smart specialization platform to have a session here,” said David Santos. This was, moreover, «the first session that the S3 platform dedicated to the tourism sector». To the Algarve, technicians came from many countries, such as «Serbia, Croatia, Norway, Spain, Italy, France, Netherlands and Denmark, among others, to explain innovation strategies linked to Tourism».
«This morning [Thursday, July 4th] we had a meeting closed to the regions of Portugal, where the five flat-regions, the Azores and Madeira presented their Smart Specialization strategies. They are not yet finished, but they are already at a very advanced stage», he revealed.
In the afternoon, there was a session on the sidelines of which David Santos spoke with our newspaper, where several cases of innovation in the tourism sector were presented. “Smart Specialization has a lot to do with innovation, which in our view is taking what is “old” and doing it again,” he said.
"This type of strategy has to do with the territory, with what is endogenous to the region", revealed David Santos. Hence, CCDRA seeks to focus Intelligent Specialization not only on varying the tourism offer, but also investing in other sectors, such as «the Sea, Agriculture, Agro-industry and renewable energies».
Smart Specialization is only possible with union
CCDRA is leading the way in creating a strategy for the region, but its implementation depends on the entire community. Public bodies, companies and other private entities and the University of the Algarve are called to work together to enable a true Intelligent Specialization.
«This initiative was very important, because we had the opportunity to get to know different experiences», considered the president of the Business Association of the Algarve Region Vítor Neto, on the sidelines of the seminar.
The association leader gave the example of Croatia, "a country that has increased the number of tourists from 5 to 10 million in a few years". One example among many, very diverse but very useful. "Tourism is a bit like this: all regions are different, but they have common problems," he said.
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