Tourism Innovation at FITUR 2025: presentation of Xato Cube, a pioneering project

20-01-25

Global Journey Consulting, an affiliate member of UN Tourism, together with the Phygital Tourism Intelligence Shop, both specialized in consulting for the Tourism Society Think Tank (TSTT), will present its innovative prototype demonstrator, Xato Cube, on January 22 at the Segittur stand at FITUR 2025. It is an OTT platform and a public-private data sharing space designed to boost tourism intelligence, regeneration and circularity in the sector.

This ambitious project has been selected in the 2024 “Last Mile” call of the Ministry of Industry and Tourism, as part of the digital transformation of the sector. The initiative focuses on the integration of various technological components in a real environment, validating an advanced tourism intelligence system. The proposal, led by the prestigious restaurant El Xato, awarded with a Michelin Star and located in La Nucia (Alicante), seeks to improve the competitiveness of the sector through innovation and digitization.

The Xato Cube will serve as a mobile laboratory for four months, from February to June, allowing simulations and tests in a real environment. This space will feature an OTT visual content platform, an artificial intelligence-based recommender and an ecosystem of information and data from public and private platforms. All this will be tested in three pilot destinations: Altea, Benidorm and La Nucia, located in the province of Alicante.

The objective is to evaluate the impact of these technologies on the competitiveness of local businesses and their integration into the tourism ecosystem of the region. In this context, the tests will focus on specific use cases such as congress tourism (MICE) and Blue Tourism, offering innovative experiences to B2B event organizers, residents and tourists. This will facilitate the creation of new proposals that enhance the offer of the Costa Blanca.

The Innovation, Science, Technology, Data and Tourism Intelligence Working Group of the TSTT, coordinated by Dr. Fernando Molina, will be in charge of supervising and validating the project's operations. Activities will be designed to develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that will be ready for testing and subsequent commercial deployment in June 2025.

The collaboration between city councils, companies in the sector and the integration of information in the OTT platform will allow training the AI recommender with updated data, improving proposals for event organizers and contributing to the sustainable development of tourism in Alicante. In addition, this approach enables more efficient planning of resources and strategies, increasing the positive impact on the destination and its local community.

Global Journey Consulting, with a strong track record in branded content, and its ability to develop storytelling with a new narrative for tourism, will bring its expertise in creating dynamic reports and advanced analytics. Thanks to these data-driven reports, informed decision-making will be facilitated, ensuring that new tourism experiences are optimally adapted to the needs of Xato Cube users.

With this initiative, FITUR 2025 becomes the ideal scenario for unveiling an innovative solution that marks a before and after in the integration of technology and tourism intelligence, promoting a more sustainable, efficient and attractive model for the sector.