FiturNext, the FITUR Sustainability Observatory dedicated to the search for good sustainable tourism practices, announces the launch of the 2025 Challenge focused on how tourism can contribute to the sustainable management of food. This call is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals , which aim to combat climate change, responsible production and consumption, reduce hunger and promote clean and healthy water.
Through the 2025 Challenge, FiturNext has the vocation to identify and recognize initiatives that contribute to improving the tourism sector through the sustainable management of food throughout its chain, valuing aspects such as the promotion of responsible consumption, as well as the implementation implementation of good practices that generate new possibilities for using food surpluses.
Thus, the reception of candidatures in three categories is now open, which can be signed up in this form until August 31, 2024. The selected projects, following the barometers of replicability and impact, will be awarded at the next celebration of the International Fair of Tourism (FITUR) of 2025.
Impact categories
Candidacies for the FiturNext 2025 Challenge will be structured based on the categories of impact and contribution to the sixth edition:
Destinations and other territories: aimed at those territorial administrative entities that direct their efforts to improve food management in the tourism sector.
Horeca and transport sector: aimed at organizations of any kind in the hotel, restaurant, cafeteria and transport subsectors that have implemented measures to optimize food management.
Other agents in the food value chain: aimed at all cross-cutting agents in the tourism food chain that promote good practices in food sustainability.
Food surplus and tourism
Food surplus is the waste of agricultural and food products that are still perfectly edible and suitable for human consumption and that, for lack of alternative uses or regulatory reasons, end up discarded as waste. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), each year one third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted, equivalent to one thousand three hundred million tons.
This phenomenon can be aggravated with tourism due to the lack of optimization of processes, irresponsible consumption or inadequate conservation of food, among some causes of surpluses in the industry. After all the above, tourism is an industry with great potential to contribute to reducing food surplus and create new alternative opportunities to waste.
Last webinar of the 2024 edition
The last dialogue organized by FiturNext on the 2024 Challenge took place on March 14. Luis Romero, promoter of Recartografías, Miguel Ángel Herrera, mayor of Genalguacil and promoter of the Genalguacil Pueblo Museo project, and Alberto Luque, managing director of the Camino del Consortium Cid, were the participants of the meeting where the conclusions and learnings of the winning initiatives were addressed on how tourism can contribute to territorial depopulation.