The City of Vitoria-Gasteiz will launch a new social control system to control and collect people’s movements and associated social behaviour. To use the so-called Tourist Intelligence System, sensors will be installed in the tourist and commercial centres of the capital to analyse the displacements that occur there. In particular, the City intends to "detect behaviors and patterns of repetition" of the people who pass through these points through the new control system.

To do so, they will use mobile devices from which they pass through the areas where the sensors are placed, controlling people’s movements by means of telephone signals. In this way, for example, the City Hall will be able to collect the number and date of transit of persons through certain places.

At the moment, some points of the Casco Viejo, the bus station, the airport, the train station, the Palace of Europe and the Green Ring intend to put the sensors in. They will send the information to the City Hall every 30 seconds and keep all the information for a month. "The analysis of the different parameters and the metrics obtained will be carried out in an aggregate way every hour, day by day and month," said the City Hall.

Tourist destination

The Basque Government’s Tourism, Trade and Consumption Advisor, Javier Hurtado, spoke last October of the Tourism Intelligence System (SIT). According to Hurtado, the government's objective is to "develop" the territory as a "tourist destination", as well as to receive "useful and significant" information in a "systematic and orderly" way to make it available to "business managers and public and private destinations". Decision making to increase production capacity is thus encouraged, while tourism is encouraged.

Ultimately, to justify the implementation of new control systems, Hurtado argued that the intention is to improve the "experience of visitors and residents". He spoke like this. "A sustainable and intelligent goal that is consolidated through data on a cutting-edge technological infrastructure that guarantees the sustainable development of the tourist territory, accessible to all and that improves the quality of the experience in the destination, together with the improvement of the quality of life of the residents".