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Nautical tourism has high qualities for coastal and insular socio-economic development. The generation of stable qualified employment, its easy complementarity with the traditional tourist offer, its attenuating seasonality effect and the drive it gives the improvement of coastal infrastructures and technological innovation, constitute some of its proven qualities. To this effect, nautical tourism and maritime in general, present themselves today as a priority hub for the European strategy of Blue Growth.
Regarding the Macaronesia archipelagos, nautical tourism development is a priority given the qualities shown by the region, such as their strategic position in the Atlantic, natural conditions and high positioning as a tourist destination in Europe. The Atlantic value as a growth engine, employment and innovation generation is a crucial opportunity barely benefited from today in these archipelagos.
Despite the strengths and opportunities likewise political willingness to promote specialisation in nautical tourism, some limitations have been detected:
- Scarce internationalisation of regional companies, with accumulated experience in sport and leisure sailing, but rather show stagnation in their activities, due to the reduced level of local action and difficulties to diversify their products abroad,
- The existing fragmentation of the industry, with the exchange local capacities, networking and commercial collaboration, resources not used for common economic benefit and creation of value,
- The need to increase local capacities, particularly in third countries and revalue the leisure nautical offer, shown to be insufficient for current demand, confirmed by previous projects, and
- The low rate of ICT use likewise the most innovative and efficient advances and solutions available for environmental management of their activities.
Hence, the NAUTICOM project proposes endowing the current marinas and small nautical companies of the region with tools, incentives and opportunities to lead the business renovation process based on internationalisation, business co-operation and innovation, as part of their sustainable growth and with a view to favouring the competitiveness of the industry. All of which will lead to an improvement in Macro-regional tourist competitiveness, environmental sustainability of the activity and labour market of the archipelagos.
