DIH-BAITUR: Digital Innovation Hub of the Balearic Islands for Artificial Intelligence and Tourism

(DIH-BAITUR) is a non-profit initiative in line with the Smart Specialisation Strategy of the Balearic Islands (RIS3), which is focused on tourism and promotes other strategic sectors, such as agriculture.

Tourism is one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic industries in the world. At the same time, it is also an “anchor” industry for all others in the region.

The Balearic Islands are one of the most important and well-known tourist destinations in the world. The competitiveness of the tourism industry is directly related to the islands’ capacity to innovate and adapt to today’s new technological changes.

Disruptive technologies have a direct impact on tourism, and this impact is much stronger than in any other sector: cloud computing, IoT, BigData, 5G... So, this industry needs a digital and innovative ecosystem that will help to support the emergence of new data and the digital economy.

At the same time, tourism is a sector that is directly linked to all other industries in the region, especially agriculture. So, DIH-BAITUR brings all these sectors and industries together “under one roof,” therefore increasing the region’s level of competitiveness.

DIH-BAITUR aims to support and boost the digital transformation of companies, especially those in the tourism and agricultural sectors. This will help them to successfully face today’s global challenges, especially those related to the new data economy, and help them to become more competitive.

DIH-BAITUR is co-run by different non-profit and public entities: the cluster of technologies applied to tourism – TURISTEC, leading the creation of DIH-BAITUR together with the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), Mallorca Chamber of Commerce, the Agricultural Cooperatives on the islands and the Regional Government of the Balearic Islands. New members to join in the short-medium termhave already been identified.

The main ambition of the Balearic Islands DIH is to become a reference model, not only for the Balearic Islands in anything related to innovation and digitisation, but also at European level for the tourism sector.

This DIH also intends to create a strong and single digital innovation ecosystem involvingnot only the tourism sector but all other sectors in the Balearic Islands, concentrating primarily on the agricultural industry. DIH-BAITUR provides services for the development of R+D projects, scaling up of innovative projects and demonstrations, and also serves as a resource for training and accelerating of start-ups with a one-stop-shop approach.

Different services have already been identified, for the technical and economic advisory services such as:

• Needs analysis
• Market and territory intelligence: Development of tools to offerMarket and territory intelligence, open to public and private entities and based on indicators
• 360 vision of technological assessment
• Technological perspective and state of the art assessment
• Economic viability analysis
• Access to finance and funding: offer information on existing grants, funds and tenders at local, national and international level for all kind of entities
• Proof of concept

Networking and incubating services such as:

• Access to competence centres
• Development of the innovation ecosystem: put together the main actors of the innovation ecosystem at regional level and generate synergies at international level
• Internationalisation
• Incubator/mentoring services: offering the possibility to incubate start-ups and SMEs as well as carry out different mentoring services from the technological and business point of view

Awareness and training activities, such as:

• Showroom activities
• Dissemination activities
• Training and education: offer training and education. Identification of skills and skills needed by companies
• The organisation of innovation events