4 Technological Centers for tourism in Spain, isn’t this too much?

In Spain there are currently being developed 4 R+D centers in several regions: Valencia, Andalucía, Illes Balears and Madrid.

One of them (ITH), in Madrid, is dedicated exclusively to hospitality subsector, his objectives are: promote companies cooperation, promote R+D+i project financing and assess its partners. Its focus areas are: architecture and building, installations, environment and energy, process management, ITC, security and quality. Their initial budget is 1m€, and they expect to be self-financed in 2 years time.

We have another center in Valencia, INVATTUR, dedicated to promote innovation at regional level, whose focus areas are: market analysis and prospective, technical support, advanced technologies introduction, R+D projects development and training. The initial budget for this center is 6,4m€.

The third one is located in Cadiz, TECNOTUR, with an initial budget of 7,2m€. Its focus areas include ITC, Restauration and gastronomy, sustainable tourism, management, and touristic equipement design.

The fourth is CIDTUR, located in Mallorca, with the next focus areas: competitive analysis in tourism, sociology and psychology of tourists, ITC, food technology, sustainable tourism and environment.

Some thoughts that come to my mind analysing these facts:
– Is it necessary that R+D policies have regional level? At national level, only Madrid and Barcelona might have critical mass for R+D in industrial sectors, but maybe some traditional tourist destinations would have critical mass for tourism sectors
– What percentage of the investments identified is for the infrastructure itself (nice, big building) and which one is for R+D. Real R+D is quite expensive, specially with the dispersion that can appear in tourism (with some actions that might not have an expected result due to the fact that there is no strong theory for innovation in services)
– Apparently there are some sectors that might need some special attention in tourism: ITC, environment and sustainable tourism

My vision includes one single big and nice building somewhere in Spain with tourism critical mass to identify R+D demands and to prepare good answers for these. The center might work at global level as knowledge is global, and public investment should have this on mind when talking about R+D policies.