The UEx points out the lack of transport as the main deficiency of tourism in Extremadura

The lack of connectivity in Extremadura transport, coupled with poor training in ICT and languages, are the main problems that currently exist in the tourism sector in the Extremadura community.

These results are the main conclusions drawn from the project ‘Analysis of critical factors for tourism development in Extremadura’, a work co-financed by the Ministry of Economy, Science and Digital Agenda of the Junta de Extremadura and by the European Regional Development Fund (Feder) within the framework of the VI Regional Research Plan, initiated in February 2019.

For Marcelino Sánchez Rivero, principal investigator of the project and professor at the Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences of the UEx, this research work aimed to identify the competitive advantages and disadvantages of the sector in the region in terms of development .

To this end, researchers belonging to the Departments of Economics and Financial Economics and Accounting of the University of Extremadura have analyzed the different indicators of tourism competitiveness in the region, in addition to identifying the training needs of Extremadura’s tourism business community in information technology and communication and study the image and online reputation of the Extremadura destination, its tourist resources and products and its establishments.

For the researcher, the fundamental results of the project that were presented this morning at the research results transfer conference can be summed up as “deficiency in the connectivity of means of transport, lack of training in information and communication technologies, especially everything in what refers to the management of social networks, and insufficient knowledge of languages, ”explains the UEx in a press release.

In this sense, the experts have proposed a series of solutions to alleviate these problems, explains Marcelino Sánchez, “such as the fact of strengthening the Badajoz airport and placing it as a point of reference in air transport in the community, above all increasing the frequency of flights, schedules and also the connections, fundamentally national».

Regarding the use of new technologies, and in light of the results, it has been possible to verify that there is currently no clear awareness among rural tourism entrepreneurs about the importance of customer opinions on social networks, in order to researchers, “this deficiency can be alleviated by offering training courses, not only to employers, but mainly to employees”, adds the UEx professor

In the project, all the official typologies included in the registry of tourism companies of the Junta de Extremadura have been studied.