WestMED highlights the importance of Tourism Indicators at the International Sun&Blue Congress 2025
On 19 and 20 November 2025, the Sun&Blue Congress brought together 832 professionals, 37 guest countries, 21 round tables, and 123 speakers, confirming the growth and global dimension of this international congress focused on Tourism and the Blue Economy.
This third edition of the Sun & Blue Congress developed a scientific programme with 11 side events – 45% of them international – which served as spaces for cooperation and knowledge transfer.
WestMED at Sun&Blue 2025
The WestMED Assistance Mechanism has played a central role at the Sun&Blue Congress ever since its launch in 2023 as an official partner, with Marta Pascual acting as a moderator, panellist and a member of the Advisory Board, representing Spain as the National Hub for the WestMED Initiative as well as the coordinator of WestMED’s Technical Group on Sustainable Tourism.
During the conference there were three events where Marta Pascual was active on behalf of the WestMED Initiative:
- As a panellist during the side event: Interreg projects in Blue Economy: present and future – on good practices in the blue economy promoted by Interreg MMM, with high potential for scalability and/or replicability in the Mediterranean and other EU regions
- As a moderator of a high level panel titled Europe’s Advances Towards Sustainability in Tourism – A political and strategic vision of sustainable European tourism – analysing Europe’s strategic role in transforming tourism towards more sustainable models, linked to the Green Deal, the Digital Agenda, and the Next Generation Funds
- As an organiser of WestMED’s side event on Tourism Indicators
Tourism Indicators – a WestMED side event
As in previous editions, the WestMED organised a side event for stakeholders during the Congress.
The topic of this year’s side event was the importance of Tourism Indicators. It was co-organised with Stephanie Vella from WestMED’s Maltese National Hub (also coordinator of WestMED’s technical Group on Sustainable Tourism), and Alessandro Pititto from the Blue Economy observatory.
The objective of the workshop titled ‘Blue Tourism Indicators: Sailing towards common approaches‘ was to share knowledge about and experience the types of tourism indicators that currently exist, how they differ, and what they have in common.
The session was opened by framing the purpose of the workshop and introducing the need for comparable, robust tourism indicators to set the stage for technical exchanges among researchers, statisticians, economists, and data specialists (watch the presentation slides that were used for the opening)
Participants were able to share solutions/methodologies to collaborate on a common solution for all. MENTIMETER was used as a tool to gather instant feedback from participants: resulting in graphs like these:
The discussion with the audience focused on how to address indicators for two main tourism topics: Tourism Seasonality and Tourism Intensity.
Participants associated tourism seasonality with challenges like overcrowding, fluctuating demand, especially during holidays, and precarious work conditions. They highlighted the pressure seasonality puts on destinations and noted weak promotion as a related factor.
There was strong consensus on the critical importance of indicators for managing sustainable tourism effectively. Many emphasized that robust indicators are crucial for developing real solutions and balancing the social, economic, and environmental aspects of tourism.
For more information contact Marta Pascual (WestMED National Hub Spain) or Stephanie Vella (westMED National Hub Malta)
