Promoting commerce, Barcelona & Europe by eixosbcn

PROMOTING COMMERCE, PROMOTING BARCELONA, PROMOTING EUROPE Local retail and tourism as drivers of prosperity in Europe

PROMOTING COMMERCE, PROMOTING BARCELONA, PROMOTING EUROPE

Local retail and tourism as drivers of prosperity in Europe

Josep XuriguÃ©, Jordi Folck, Albert Torras EDITORS

Publicacions de Barcelona Comerç no. 1 First edition: April 2019 Advisory council: Alfons Barti, Lluis Llanas and Salvador Vendrell. Coordination: Maria Sabaté, Amparo Madrid, Esther Ruiz and Esco Gallego. Cover design and layout: Cake communications.

Editors: Josep Xurigué, Jordi Folck and Albert Torras. Proof-reading: Ricard Berrocal

A joint publication by Barcelona Comerç and Veus Públiques Edicions

Barcelona Comerç Ferlandina, 25 08001 Barcelona www.eixosbcn.org

Veus Públiques Comte d’Urgell, 171, 3, 2 08036 Barcelona

Printed at Gràfiques Rey Legal deposit: B 9985- 2019

ISBN: 13- 978-84-946252-5-1

Dedicated to the thousands of men and women who every day raise the shutters of their shops all over Europe

Greetings and welcome

Model of city and relationship with local commerce

Commerce, culture and tourism

Commercial models in the cities of the future

Impact of commerce in the urban landscape.

Technology and commerce

The perfect shop

The reader is holding a collection of contributions to the Conference on Commerce, Culture and Tourism recently held in Barcelona and that closed the Commerce and Culture Year. Three editors transformed the talks into words: Josep XuriguĂŠ, Doctor in Political Sciences, and the writers Albert Torras and Jordi Folck, both with prestigious careers. The wide range of contents and the differences in presentations and examples required two different approaches to this information: the literal transcription of some of them and a third person account when the scope of some of the speakersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; talks required another perspective, perhaps more precise. This makes the documents easier to read while also enriching them. In some cases, there was a debate and the audience participated, as revealed in the final conclusions or additions. In others, the words were conclusive enough or were limited for reasons of time. In any case, this document is an invaluable work tool for retailers, cultural agents and institutions. On the following pages, all of them will find enough tools to plot a course to a future of change that should be regarded with optimism and as a great new opportunity.

The editors, April 2019

Le XIVe Giornate Europee del Commercio e del Turismo del 12 – 13 novembre 2018 hanno rappresentato una tappa fondamentale nell’attività di VITRINES D’EUROPE e quindi innanzitutto ringrazio la Fondazione Barcelona Comerç, il Comune di Barcellona e la Generalitat de Catalunya, per l’organizzazione e tutti coloro che hanno partecipato e collaborato alla realizzazione di questo importante evento. VITRINES D’EUROPE è nata proprio a Barcellona vent’anni fa e per noi questa è rimasta la “città simbolo”, a livello europeo, di come si possa valorizzare efficacemente il commercio di prossimità e nello stesso tempo integrarlo con la città e le altre attività economiche, mantenendo nel contempo un’elevata quota dei consumi a livello urbano e di quartiere. Durante le XIVe Giornate Europee del Commercio e del Turismo abbiamo discusso sia del ruolo sociale del commercio, della relazione tra commercio e città, delle possibilità di integrazione tra commercio, cultura e turismo, ma anche di modelli di gestione commerciale delle città del futuro e di evoluzione delle nuove tecnologie nel settore retail, anche in riferimento all’e-commerce. Ma proprio in questa fase in cui stiamo assistendo a livello europeo a un rallentamento della crescita economica, il settore commerciale e turistico ha bisogno della massima attenzione da parte delle Istituzioni europee e dei Governi nazionali e locali affinchè continui a svolgere, oltre al suo ruolo economico, anche una funzione fondamentale per la qualità della vita dei cittadini, la vivibilità e la sicurezza delle nostre città e del territorio. Commercio e turismo sono un comparto fondamentale dell’economia europea con oltre 8 milioni di imprese (più del 90% con meno di 10 addetti) e oltre 43 milioni di occupati e necessitano, specialmente per ciò che riguarda le piccole imprese, sia di un alleggerimento della pressione fiscale e dei costi della burocrazia, che di un supporto per l’innovazione, la competizione di mercato e l’accesso alle nuove tecnologie, nonché di un’efficace lotta contro la concorrenza sleale e le attività economiche illegali e abusive.

The 14th European Conference on Commerce and Tourism, held on 12 and 13 November 2018, was a milestone in the work of Vitrines d’Europe. First, I would like to thank the Fundació Barcelona Comerç, Barcelona City Council and the Government of Catalonia for organising the event, as well as all those who participated in and contributed to it. Vitrines d’Europe was founded twenty years ago in Barcelona, which for us has remained the “symbolic city” in the European field in terms of the efficacy of its local retail and the reinvigoration of shopping in the city and neighbourhood. The 14th European Conference on Commerce and Tourism was an opportunity to debate the social role of enterprises as well as the link between commerce and city, the integration of commerce in culture and tourism, and the evolution of new technologies in retail. In other words, issues that we believe are central to progress in the sector. We believe that at this stage, when we are seeing Europe declining in terms of economy, commerce and tourism, we need the full attention of the European institutions and national and local governments to continue carrying out our work. It should be remembered that commerce is a fundamental activity for the quality of life of all citizens and the security of our territory. It is also a key factor of the European economy with over 8 million enterprises (more than 90% of which have fewer than 10 employees), which provide 43 million jobs throughout the continent. Given its importance, at Vitrines d’Europe we ask for a reduction in taxes and administrative costs for retail and support for innovation and competitiveness in the market. We also call on the institutions to ensure access to new technologies and to fight against unfair competition and illegal and abusive economic activities. We hope for a positive response to our requests and are convinced that the development of our forum will have helped to add value to our sector. In our turn, we will continue working with enthusiasm and determination in the spirit of the event motto: Promoting commerce, Promoting Europe.

Promoting

Barcelona,

Speriamo che queste nostre richieste vengano accolte e siamo sicuri che le XIVe Giornate Europee di Barcellona abbiano contribuito a dare ancora maggior valore al ruolo del commercio e del turismo. Continueremo comunque a lavorare con sempre maggiore forza ed entusiasmo seguendo lo slogan dell’evento: Fem comerç, fem ciutat, fem Europa.

Stefano Bollettinari

Greetings and welcome

ADA COLAU Mayoress of Barcelona

Ada Colau i Ballano (Barcelona, 3 March 1974) is a Catalan politician and the Mayoress of Barcelona since 13 June 2015. She was the co-founder and spokesperson of the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (PAH) between 2008 and 2013, after a decade mobilising for the right to housing and with the anti-globalisation movement, combining it with her work at the Observatori DESC (Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) in Barcelona. She is the visible face of Barcelona en ComĂş, the candidature that received the most votes in the Barcelona local elections of 2015.

The Mayoress of Barcelona, Ada Colau, opens the conference with a speech describing commerce and tourism policies in Barcelona throughout this legislature, providing data on the impact of local retail in the city and highlighting some already familiar values of commerce. Moreover, in her presentation she introduces some of the issues that will later be developed in the conversation with the journalist Albert Closas. Good morning everyone. Councillor for Tourism and Commerce, other councillors present, President of the Fundació Barcelona Comerç, President of Vitrines d’Europe, Secretary General of Vitrines d’Europe and friends, especially those who have come from afar. Welcome to Barcelona, and thank you very much for inviting me to the opening of this European conference on a subject that is absolutely central to Barcelona. For us it is a great opportunity to use these talks as a space of reflection, of interaction between commerce, culture and tourism in cities, and to discuss the challenges that must be faced to ensure the survival of local retail. Issues such as sustainable mobility, technological challenges, competition of big lobbies... Urban retail is one of the most important economic activities in Barcelona. Let’s look at some of the most notable figures. In 2017, retail in our city achieved a turnover of more than 35,700 million euros and contributed 13.5% of the city’s GDP in 2016. In 2017, commerce provided jobs for over 151,360 people, mostly in the retail sector, almost 64% of the total. In all jobs throughout the city in 2017 retail accounted for 14.4%, which confirms the importance of the sector in the economy of Barcelona. 94% of residents in our city ‒ or 9 out of 10 ‒ make regular purchases of food products in their local neighbourhoods. And 7 out of 10 also purchase non-food products in their neighbourhood. Retail’s commitment to the environment is not only a major economic issue. In addition, we do

not tire of stressing a fundamental aspect (also mentioned last week, when we presented the city awards for shops): that it identifies the city and the neighbourhoods and fulfils an essential function of social cohesion for the city model we have and want. A more human city, a more personal city and a safer city; a city with life in the streets where residents have points of reference. A city with deep social involvement, with projects such as “Radars” or the “Camins escolars”. Local shops are a reference point for our lives, and this is priceless. The city model we want for Barcelona is one where most of the day-

Urban retail is one of the most important economic activities in Barcelona. 94% of residents in our city - or 9 out of 10 make regular purchases of food products in their local neighbourhoods.

to-day life of its residents can take place in an intimate environment, with a varied commercial range spread across the city, in a polycentric structure. The neighbourhoods are the first level of social integration, and local retail is one of the instruments of local relations. The municipal markets also play a leading role in this network as a driver of economic revitalisation. We are one of the few cities in the world where all the neighbourhoods have a municipal market closely linked to residents. And in a context of globalisation and with the trend towards uniformity, this local retail helps to build this differentiated identity of each neighbourhood and of the city as a whole while providing a unique and undeniably important element that defines Barcelona as one of the most attractive cities in the world. This conference also refers to this close relationship between commerce, culture and tourism, because we cannot effectively manage the city without taking them into consideration. A management designed to ensure consistency and compatibility between existing sectorial policies and all related issues, such as housing, mobility and commerce itself. The unequal distribution of tourism in Barcelona currently poses challenges and opportunities that are also differentiated. And, therefore, we must

develop strategies according to the needs of each neighbourhood and promote synergies between the different actors. In some places we take measures to protect local retail and markets from the effects of tourism. La Boqueria Market may come to mind, for example. But in other neighbourhoods we strive to find positive links and synergies to attract tourism to local retail. Another strategy that we have promoted in recent years is the economic development plans, a real economic model for our less profitable neighbourhoods, a plural, diverse and solid economic model both in activity sectors and wealth distribution. Their raison dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ĂŞtre must be focused on satisfying the needs of the residents in our neighbourhoods and in our city. We want to make traditional business compatible with innovative projects and initiatives of the social and sharing economy. These economic development plans promote projects such as training and support activities, which, in addition to training future professionals, help strengthen the shopkeeperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s job as an entrepreneurship option for the unemployed in the area, especially after all these years of crisis. They also promote actions, such as supply and demand studies, to identify potential shortcomings in the supply of products needed for sustainable daily life in the

neighbourhood. Or they collect and disseminate information about which shops in the area are about to close in order to facilitate their transfer. We design actions to reinforce local retail. And all this, obviously, with the major challenge of e-commerce and digitalisation, where for years we have been working together with the different retail organisations and associations in our city. Because many of the challenges facing commerce at this time are directly linked to new consumption patterns due to the emergence of these new technologies. We want to maintain our retail and city model. We are very clear about this. And so, precisely for this reason, we are committed to facilitating the digital transformation of retail to ensure that no one is left behind and to guarantee its competitiveness. Changes must be made to preserve our local retail model. It is a shared vision for retail organisations and the City Council itself. The future clearly lies in integrated shopping environments; in other words, those that combine the physical characteristics of the store and traditional shopping with the characteristics of buying in the digital environment and the possibility of continuously combining one with the other. For this reason, we must emphasise the digitalisation strategy of local retail. At the City

Council, with our limited capabilities, we do this through various activities: with Barcelona Activa, with training, with lines of subsidy and with one of the most recent actions that we have promoted together with the commercial fabric: the Viba card, the client loyalty card for local retail, which is currently in the testing period, although we are sure it will have a long life. It is born out of the initiative of several organisations representing local retail and municipal markets, with the aim of attracting all the associations in the city and being present in all neighbourhoods. It is a tool for retailers and is intended to help maintain our commercial and city model. Not to mention its contribution to the public-private collaboration that is always behind this joint work. I just want to stress, in this initial presentation, that retail is undoubtedly a fundamental economic activity in our city and one of the most important, as already seen both in volume and jobs created. But for us, it is practically like the sap, like the veins that carry blood and, therefore, life to each one of the 73 neighbourhoods in our city. The social function and identity provided by local retail is as or more important than the economic function it performs, and therefore we are firmly committed to working with you so that this commercial activity has a long life in our city. Thank you very much.

SALVA VENDRELL

President of Barcelona Comerç He works in three of the most representative local commerce organizations in Barcelona. In the last 10 years he has combined his professional activity in the retail sector with his profession of photographer and the family business in the catering sector. He owns one of the most emblematic bars in Barcelona, Marcel Santaló, with more than 50 years of history in the city. He is in constant training and firmly believes in the digital transformation of the world of commerce. He has postgraduate degree in Retail Marketing (ESIC) and a Master’s in Digital Business (ESIC).

Good morning. Mayoress, councillors, all the representatives of the Government of Catalonia, also to the colleagues of RETAILcat, guilds, Comertia and the catering guild. Thank you all for attending. Of course, also to our colleagues of Vitrines d’Europe. To the President of Conferescenti Emilia Romagna, the President of the Associação Commercial e Industrial de Barcelos, and the President of the Confédération des Commerçants de France. And to the speakers. Thank you all for attending. And thank you for being with us at the start of the 14th European Conference on Commerce and Tourism. One year ago we told you that one of the activities framed within the Commerce and Culture Year would be the holding in Barcelona of this conference. Time passes, and quickly, and the conference is now a reality. In a few minutes, it will open and will serve to find the keys to preserving local retail. And not only preserve it but also promote and make it a little stronger

every day. In this respect, digitalisation and globalisation come to mind. But we will not only talk about realities, threats and opportunities for retail. Tourism will also be a very important issue because it unquestionably directly affects the retail sector, and if we want to find an example, the city of Barcelona is the best one. Today we begin two extremely enriching days, which we invite you to enjoy. Knowledge, ideas and proposals from international speakers should help us to find the key to the dynamisation of future local retail. Two days to open our minds, grab a notebook and become authentic sponges. As President of Barcelona Comerç, Secretary of Vitrines d’Europe and organiser of this conference, I have the honour to welcome you. Welcome to the 14th European Conference on Commerce and Tourism. Benvinguts, Bienvenidos, Bienvenus, Benvenuti, Bemvidos to Barcelona. Thank you so much!

LLUÍS LLANAS

Secretary General of Vitrines d’Europe Lluís Llanas is the owner of the shop Llanas Interiorisme, a family business established over eighty years ago that has gradually transformed, driven by an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit, as well as Study Decoració Hi-Tech, an interior design studio. For over twenty years, Llanas has been involved in the retail association world of Barcelona. He has been President of the Associació de Comerciants Creu Coberta since 2003. As a result of this post, he is also founding patron and Executive Vice-President of Barcelona Comerç, and Vice President of the Consell de Comerç de Sants-Montjuïc. He has received the Albert González Barcelona Retail Prize.

Good morning, Bon dia, Buenos días, buon giorno, bonjour! Mayoress, councillors, Director General of Commerce, Director of Commerce, authorities, presidents, patrons of Barcelona Comerç, friends. The conference we start today in Barcelona firmly establishes Vitrines d’Europe and seeks to be a meeting not only to discuss the state of commerce and tourism in the continent but also, and above all, to be able to agree common strategies that will be useful to us to face the coming years. We have developed a programme with leading experts on commerce and tourism to ask questions but also to answer them together. Identifying good practices must set an example for the sector, which is more interconnected every day. What happens today in France, Italy, Belgium, Portugal or Catalonia should serve to make us reflect and adopt appropriate measures. Among the roundtables, I would like to highlight some personalities who are with us and encourage them to share their views on these issues as authoritative voices. People who are always one step ahead. The speakers include the consultant Michael Colville-Andersen, the President of the Condéfération des Commerçants de France Francis Palombi, the President of the Institute of Place Management, Cathy Parker, the public policy specialist consultant John Griffiths, and the Managing Directors of Ulabox and Beabloo, Jaume Gomà and Jaume Portell, among others. And I would especially like to thank the Mayoress of Barcelona, Ada Colau, for also participating in the debate with her important perspective on the strategies of commerce and the city. One of the innovations of this conference is to

include tourism in the title. It had already been transversally included in the content, but we want to go further. Tourism is one of the most important sources of income in a Europe devoted to services rather than to the productive economy. And taking into account the strategic lines of tourism in our cities, and its reception, we chose to include them. Tourism is not just a market. There is a commercial tourism model that has spread to all of our cities. Making local and traditional retail coexist with open, cosmopolitan and sustainable tourism is also one of our challenges as a group. The European Conference on Commerce and Tourism is a unique opportunity in the continent to discuss the business and tourism model we want, not just what we want but what we need for our economy that is increasingly connected between the Euroregions. The objective of Vitrines d’Europe this year must focus on the motto “Promoting commerce, promoting Barcelona, promoting Europe”. That is, we have to make clear our commitment to the urban fabric of local retail in Europe, as the basis of our cities and as a guarantor of our model of coexistence, a model that we must preserve in societies that are beginning to suffer a major crisis of values. Reaching agreements on the commerce and tourism model in our cities must be a priority. Some of these agreements must be promoted through technological challenges, as discussed in some presentations. Obviously, we have to talk about urban landscape and the integration of the commercial fabric into our cities, but one of the most important issues must be how we imagine the perfect shop. What this perfect shop should be, today and in the not too distant future, in a

time of great change, with the presence of big economic sectors that precisely want to eliminate us shifting from universal door-to-door selling to direct distribution.

Today and tomorrow are two very special days for

What can we do to give our shops added value? In this regard, the culture applied to commerce is another of the issues that we incorporate in the presentations. Because undeniably, the shops that survive will be those that not only sell things but where things happen. We will explain what we did in Barcelona in 2018 with the Commerce and Culture Year programme and how these two sectors affected by the latest crises have aligned themselves with successful projects.

that affect us collectively. I think that for those of

The continent is increasingly falling victim to reactionary messages, against immigration, against diversity of all kinds, against freedoms, against everything that scares us. Local retail also has its fears. Fear of the big distributors, overlooking retail, of unfair competition, of insecurity and even of unauthorised street sellers. We must not let fear take hold of us. With forums like Vitrines d’Europe we have to equip ourselves with the shared tools, the lines of work that we need to preserve our small spaces of individual freedoms, such as our shops, our shops. To also become heralds of the collective freedoms that we have fought to win.

the manifestoes are not to be hung on a wall or put

us because they will allow us to get to know each other better, exchange successful experiences, and also ward off possible failures and threats us who are from Barcelona and its surroundings, it is a privilege to have so many personalities to provide us with their point of view. And for those who came from abroad, a fantastic opportunity to share your experience with all of us. In each edition of Vitrines d’Europe we produced a manifesto. This year we will do so again; yesterday our president, Mr. Stefano Bollettinari, mentioned this. But we have to understand that in a showcase and that’s it. We have to implement them. We have to work on the approach we have agreed, and at the next conference we must take stock. That is why we have to give Vitrines d’Europe a powerful structure that is effective in each of the countries where we work and in Europe as a whole. It must have a voice in the organs of the European Union, acting as a pressure lobby in everything we want to defend. Because, as Joan Fuster said, any actions we do will be taken by others. Good work to everyone and enjoy the conference.

STEFANO BOLLETTINARI President of Vitrines dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Europe Stefano Bollettinari has a degree in Political Science, has been coordinator of Ancestor-Confesercenti Emilia Romagna for more than 20 years, and since 2006 has been President of Vitrines dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Europe. For almost forty years he has been a member of the national presidency of Confesercenti, one of the main Italian business associations working in commerce, tourism and services, and is also the national coordinator of the Italian National Association of Historic Centres (ANCESTOR). He is also co-founder of the International Tourism Exchange of 100 cities of art in Italy and member of the board of directors of various companies in the Eurosportello (Enterprise Europe Network) system of the Tourist Promotion Agency of Emilia Romagna Region and the Board of Accounts of Unipol Banca.

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Barcelona. Buon giorno a tutti. First of all, as President of Vitrines d’Europe, I would like to greet and thank all the participants present here, the speakers, and the authorities that have taken part. As Salvador Vendrell, President of Barcelona Comerç, said, this is our fourteenth conference at European level. Our last was in Italy in 2015. I would like to thank the Mayoress of Barcelona, Mrs. Ada Colau, for her extraordinary and fascinating speech, and also the Councillor for Commerce of Barcelona, Mr. Agustí Colom. I would also like to greet the representatives of the Government of Catalonia and all the many institutions present, as well as the sponsors who have helped finance the conference, Barcelona Comerç and its president, Mr. Salva Vendrell, and Mr. Lluís Llanas, who also spoke. And Alfons Barti and all the contributors to Barcelona Comerç, who have made this conference possible. I thank you for the welcome we have received and for the fact that Barcelona Comerç has taken on the main expenses and organisation. I would also like to acknowledge the participants of the member associations of Vitrines d’Europe, and its members with us today in Barcelona from France, Italy, Belgium and Portugal. In all the years of this conference we have faced many problems of local retail, linked to the dynamics of the city and the evolution of tourism, which in recent years, as we have already heard, has become increasingly important for European cities. It must be said here in Barcelona, which for us at Vitrines d’Europe is a city that symbolises of the value of local retail, where 90% of purchases are made in neighbourhoods. This does not exist in any other European city, and it is very important. In my opinion, the Barcelona model, which I have studied for many years, does not

exist in any other city in Europe. This is important and positive for you because you have succeeded in combining it with tradition and innovation, and I can say that this has not been done in many other European cities. It is precisely here in Barcelona that Vitrines d’Europe was born in 1995, then under another name, the European Federation of Urban Commercial Centres, and some of the people who were there are also present today. I would like to remind you that the different founders included a friend of mine, who is no longer with us and was the leader of Barcelona Comerç, Secretary General of Vitrines d’Europe and with whom we worked extensively. I’m talking about Mr. Joan Mateu, who contributed a lot to our work and to the association. An organisation that has been working for 25 years now, a very long time, and is still active. We came to Barcelona in 1996 and also in 2004, when we developed the Barcelona Manifesto. And we are also here today to continue this work. The activity must continue in the interests of our SMEs. In this conference we will talk about various topics that Lluís Llanas has already set out. I think I just want to say something about innovation and technologies. SMEs should not be left out of the technologies. On the contrary, we should provide help and support to integrate them. The internet can be a way of promoting SMEs. Not all companies will be able to do this but we also know that physical shops will never disappear. Amazon itself is opening physical shops, points of sale, and, therefore, the market share of e-commerce is, depending on the areas, between 5% and 15% maximum. The future will be multi-channel. Online and offline commerce side by side. And small companies can do this. Let’s not make the

mistake of thinking we have traditional retail that ignores innovation. We have to be able to do both. There are many examples of SMEs that use multichannel logic and achieve very significant results. In this meeting in Barcelona I would like to emphasise the importance of the turnover represented by the 35 million euros of local retail. In the Eurozone we have more than eight million companies in the field of commerce and tourism, of which more than 90% are micro-enterprises with up to ten employees. If we talk about medium-sized enterprises, we would reach 43 million people working in this sector. The data is very significant and we must remember it often. Our sector needs the utmost attention and we must remind the European Union. When we started to focus on business grants from the European Union, we insisted that they should be geared towards innovation and the care of SMEs. Innovation should not only be for large companies and chains but also for small businesses. Our SMEs must be helped, they must be supported. They are not only economically important but also play a fundamental social role in the quality of life of citizens and citizen security. I also recall what the mayoress said about Airbnb. We need to limit the proliferation of this kind of accommodation. When cities end up with only tourists and not citizens, they decline. We do not

have to stop tourism. But careful! If we let down our citizens, all the activity of the city is put at risk and it will begin to experience great difficulties. This limitation has also happened in many European cities, even in San Francisco, where the platform was born. Tourism must be a legitimate business activity rather than activities which may be evading taxes. Big internet platforms must be subject to the same taxes as other companies. As a result of this re-launch of the economy and the recovery that we have experienced after the crisis suffered since 2008, we have now entered a slowdown at European level. The European retail data is not encouraging. We have had 1.03% growth, with very little variation. Consumption has stagnated, which is not good. We must not lower our guard because we should maintain economic growth and customer satisfaction to avoid returning to a situation of stagnation in consumption, which in some European countries, unfortunately, is happening and weakening local retail. This is why, at Vitrines dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Europe, we must appeal to European and local authorities to save and promote SMEs. In many European countries the number of independent business premises is being reduced. Ad hoc regulations must be urgently implemented to preserve local retail, reduce bureaucracy, fiscal pressure and supply costs, and support start-ups. We need a kind of

Marshall Plan if we want commerce to maintain the positions and role it has had and that at least can develop. We have to provide assistance, look to the European Union for funds for the next seven years for commerce and tourism service companies. Small businesses must also be allowed to access European funds. Sometimes the regulations are so complicated that these companies do not manage to apply them and we must support them. We must fight illegal trading, hiring and counterfeiting present in our economic fabric more forcefully. We must do it more uniformly, eliminating fiscal pressure, and ensuring that big companies do not have so many facilities. We need to provide good access to credit for SMEs,

We must appeal to European and local authorities to save and promote SMEs.

we must try to change the European service directive that envisages total liberalisation and harms SMEs with regulations that have increased the advantages of big companies over small businesses. European plans are needed for small businesses. We have to create urban shopping districts and other cooperative formats, which we will talk about in a roundtable. Finally, I wanted to stress that the attractiveness of these European cities and the commercial areas must be enhanced to provide them with more urban quality, more security, more parking. We have to make cities that are sustainable, vital and dynamic and have the role they have historically had as drivers of Europe’s economy. We must be a point of social cohesion. We talked before about city models. I want to finish by reading a fragment of the epilogue that we produced in Barcelona in 2004, and that is absolutely valid, although fourteen years have passed. “We do not want a city scattered with motorways that cross it in a way that is not sustainable, incapable of integrating and accommodating people and cultures. We believe in European cities with squares, streets where you can stroll and find your own identity.” That is why I agree with the conference motto of this year, which seems to me very appropriate: “Promoting commerce, promoting Barcelona, promoting Europe”.

Model of city and relationship with local commerce

Ada Colau, Mayor of Barcelona and Albert Closas, journalist.

ADA COLAU TALKS TO ALBERT CLOSAS Albert Closas: Thank you, Mayoress. We have half an hour because you have to leave at half past ten. You have already highlighted many things but perhaps the first question about what concerns us most and brings us here is: What can Barcelona offer and what is it offering today to avoid running the risk of becoming a theme park to which globalisation and digitalisation are leading us? Ada Colau: This is a complex strategy. First, because undoubtedly globalisation has many good things. The fact that people travel is good, as is learning from the experiences of other places. In other words, globalisation is not bad in itself. But it’s true that economic globalisation, as it has developed in recent years and sped up with technological changes, does pose risks. These risks are affecting all cities, and we are all working on it. We are not just talking about Barcelona. We are talking about any global city where there can be big chains, big companies that see a major business opportunity and, if we don’t intervene together with the city fabric and institutions, we run the risk of desertification or standardisation, of the centre of Barcelona filling up with the same chains and suddenly becoming exactly the same as the centre of Prague or Berlin. I think this is bad and, therefore, we must control it, despite the limited powers we have. Because we can intervene up to a given point; there are European directives and there are rules of the game that we don’t establish, but we can use the tools we have within our reach. Albert Closas: Which tools? When we talk about joint public-private intervention, how far can we

go? Ada Colau: In this aspect we are working on several strategies. As I said, first it is necessary to strengthen local retail to make it competitive. In other words, so that the advantages brought about by technology don’t turn into disadvantages that make it less competitive. And, to this end, we need training, support, the loyalty card, and so on. Later, in specific local situations, we have urbanism tools, though not as many as we would like. For instance, one of the typical debates on the issue of globalisation is the case of emblematic shops, which are a very clear distinguishing feature of retail and the city itself. In this respect, despite having limited powers, we are doing things. With the municipal groups a special plan has been approved, featuring a list of emblematic shops and protection elements with the tools within our reach: tax rebates, small subsidies so that the shop can continue operating... Sometimes we can protect the shop but the current regulations don’t allow us to protect its business. And here we are faced with several situations. For instance, when we see that there is a business with a family who has run it since it was founded, which gives it an emblematic local character, and this family has decided not to continue, we have to try to find, support and encourage the members of future generations to run the shop. Albert Closas: Here relations with the associations are also important. Ada Colau: They are essential. We must work with all of them on these projects. The BIDs, which you also wanted to talk about, are one of the strategies. All these multiple strategies –

because there is not just one â&#x20AC;&#x201C; are developed with the associations. The key is to work hand in hand with the retail fabric that actually exists. Albert Closas: The famous BIDs. How do you see them? There are several models. We might run the risk that the result is more Anglo-Saxon than Mediterranean. How do you think they could be organised? Ada Colau: We think it interesting to look for strategies to strengthen the associative movement and ensure that there are no big chains taking advantage while disregarding the retail sector and the work and resources necessary to maintain this associative fabric and the added value it brings. So this commitment and participation must be studied. However, we must work so that it is done in a sustainable way, with the agreement of the whole neighbourhood, without creating inequalities. This was one of the great fears in the neighbourhood fabric: depending on the model adopted it can mean that rich shops finally have lucrative environments and poor shops in poor neighbourhoods are left behind. And therefore we should be very careful when applying this model so that there is no inequality in the services they can provide. Bearing in mind this framework, which Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m convinced is shared with the retail fabric, we must once again work with those who have powers, and we are holding meetings with the Government of Catalonia. The Government of Catalonia must prepare a regulation and the state has to revise the Local Finance Act to enable changes in taxes. I know that there is the will by both parties and that there is a working group both at the level of the Government of Catalonia

and the state to study this implementation. Albert Closas: For the BIDs there is a model that would work through voting. Would it be positive for residents of some of these neighbourhoods to have a vote, even weighted? Ada Colau: With more participation and agreement with the people, it will undoubtedly be more positive. In general terms, we all agree on this. Albert Closas: Back to the risk of trivialisation and globalisation of tourism, given that this is a conference on tourism and commerce, we will perpetually be discussing tourism. There is

We find it interesting to seek out strategies to strengthen partnerships and to ensure that there are no big chains that profit from the commercial fabric while disregarding it.

a danger of dying of success. But one thing is Passeig de Gràcia and another is when tourism enters a neighbourhood very quickly, as we are seeing near Park Güell. How can this be regulated? Ada Colau: There are cases where we come a little late and there are situations of clear imbalance but here we have several urbanism resources. For example, an urbanism plan has been produced to limit the souvenir shops around the big monuments. It is a tool that doesn’t work by itself but it is a mechanism we have. Or, for instance, with a new urban planning intervention. Gentrification, which is how this global phenomenon is known today, was not anticipated. We didn’t anticipate how the value of the area would increase as well as the prices of rentals of both homes and commercial premises. In the past none of this was taken into account. Now we are taking it into consideration from a perspective that covers many aspects, and when an intervention is carried out we have the tools to avoid this happening.

If there is no local retail to provide life, it is more difficult for anyone to have a normal life in the neighbourhood, and this is a circle that ends up damaging tourism itself. I always point this out a lot.

Albert Closas: The case of Sant Antoni. Ada Colau: We now have a very recent example in the neighbourhood of Sant Antoni. Here we have immediately produced a use plan with the agreement of the neighbourhood and retail fabric and the surrounding areas of the Market. We knew that it would be a very powerful attraction point, and we produced a land use plan to protect the existing shops. Because the retail fabric, the neighbourhood fabric and the city are interested in protecting the existing shops so that this dynamic of desertification or monoculture does

not displace traditional retail. Here we have been able to produce a land use plan in time. In other cases, we have not arrived in time. I think that it is necessary to gradually incorporate this viewpoint in all our strategies. For instance, in Ciutat Vella, which is one of the areas most affected, where mass tourism has caused greater impact and collateral damage. Tourism has a positive effect, of course, but sometimes it has side effects when

there is overcrowding and a negative effect on housing and retail, which in the end is a vicious circle. If there is no revitalising retail, it is more difficult for there to be ordinary life in the neighbourhood, and this is a circle that finally damages tourism itself. I always emphasise this aspect. It doesn’t mean that we must have one a policy for tourists and another for residents. It must be a global policy for the city. When you conduct a survey of tourists, they tell you that they like seeing life in the neighbourhoods and real shops. They don’t like to see a city for tourists, a theme park. And tourists are very clear about this, and we want neighbourhoods to have life, with locals living there, with diversified and local retail. And now in Ciutat Vella we have to implement measures to prevent this because, as we’ve come a bit late, there has been a lot of touristification. Through the neighbourhood plan, we are beginning to introduce the measure we have called “Municipal-sponsored commercial premises” to establish shops that have the support of the Council. It is quite an innovative initiative and consists of buying premises that were closed by the Council in order to encourage those activities that we believe are positive and promote a type of retail that fosters neighbourhood life. In our view, this is what Ciutat Vella mainly needs. Albert Closas: And is it working? Ada Colau: It has just started. It’s a ¡ neighbourhood plan action and we’ll see how it works in the next few months. The idea is to do the same in Nou Barris. And it is just another tool, not the only one, but we could use it alongside urbanism measures, rebates, training, and so on.

Albert Closas: A very controversial issue comes to mind, tourist accommodation, specifically Airbnb. We all know what has happened, but one of the arguments they use in their defence is that they contribute wealth to the neighbourhoods and that they even bring tourists to outlying neighbourhoods, that they decentralise, encourage commercial life in that neighbourhood... This would be in line with want you want, but you have stopped it. Ada Colau: Decentralising and sharing is being incentivised because what we have done is the result of having to deal with a situation of disorder and chaos with thousands of illegal tourist apartments that caused a lot of problems, affected the price of housing, created conflicts and unfair competition for the hotel sector because they didn’t pay taxes. We have made Airbnb aware of this and made them understand that they cannot advertise illegal apartments. At first they didn’t understand but now, after a fine of 600,000 euros, they have begun to understand and remove these ads and now they realise that weren’t complying with the regulations like others, which meant unfair competition and flagrant inequality. This is one thing. The other concerns the model we are working on. Do we want to share tourism among the neighbourhoods? Of course we do. This is why there is a tourist accommodation plan. The first reaction was that we wanted to stop the economic activity, and right now we are an international benchmark. There are many European cities that have come to look at how Barcelona has done it because we share these problems with Amsterdam, Berlin, London

and many global cities. And, indeed, the tourist accommodation plan doesn’t say that it is not possible to build another hotel, for instance. It says that it is not possible, for example, in Ciutat Vella. In Ciutat Vella we need residents, we need to repopulate the district. In contrast, it is possible to build hotels in other areas of the city that don’t have as much tourist activity. So it’s a good idea to decentralise, to generate this polycentrism at all levels, both commercial and tourist. We must encourage it but in an orderly fashion. We can’t allow everyone to do what they want because then uncontrolled activities appear. Albert Closas: It’s clear that they could be more hotels, but could there be more Airbnb accommodation? Ada Colau: Here we have adopted a clear stance by saying that we need homes used as homes. Barcelona has a great need for housing. We need properties to be used for living, and in the tourist accommodation plan we have said that those that are legal – just over 9,000 – have their licence and can operate. But this can’t grow further because, I repeat, we need homes used as homes. Renting rooms is a pending issue, which must be discussed with the Government of Catalonia, because it involves a new regulation. This could still be an opportunity for some families but it has to be done in a very orderly manner because we can’t allow it to become a backdoor for former

illegal tourist apartments to conceal themselves as small owners and end up generating more speculation. We need to find the way with the Government of Catalonia to arrange this issue of renting rooms. Albert Closas: In a hotel you basically have a place to sleep, with or without food, but you have a room, but in a house they tell you that you’re in a neighbourhood and can therefore participate in the neighbourhood, in local life and shopping and they make it sound very attractive. Ada Colau: This is not an argument. If we are saying that a home must be a home, and that a family will live there, they will of course use shops 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all the days of the year. Albert Closas: You said that the first concern and need of citizens, and above all young people, is to be able to continue living in Barcelona, which is already an achievement. Comertia, in partnership with a major real estate company in Barcelona, conducted a survey on empty commercial premises outside the main shopping areas and estimated that there are around 30,000. And they suggested that it is definitively acknowledged that they will never be used as shops. All those living in neighbourhoods know this. Comertia estimates that at least 10,000 of these premises could become social housing for young people or

senior citizens. Ada Colau: We have examined this and in terms of urban planning it is complicated. A committee in the plenary session focusing on housing debated this issue with the other municipal groups, and they agreed that, right away, that we have not given up on this retail. We think it would be a mistake to say that we can amend the Metropolitan General Plan and these premises will be given another use. Moreover, it is not so easy because having a habitability certificate involves meeting a series of requisites that many of these premises would probably fail. Albert Closas: Getting this certificate is the responsibility of the owner. Ada Colau: We don’t rule out studying and examining it, being aware that in terms of urban planning it is complicated, but, as I said, we have not given up on this commercial activity. It is possible to conduct surveys, such as the local economic development plans that are being produced, which involve painstaking work. We are allocating millions of euros to people who have been unemployed for a long time, to shops at risk of permanent closure. It is a work that has to be done by the districts and especially the most vulnerable neighbourhoods, to give support case by case and provide small subsidies and training to provide an outlet for many of these activities.

Also, for instance, the programme of transferring economic and service activities located on the first or second floor to ground floor premises. We can look for economic activities that can bring life to these premises. We can’t just allow them to be closed, and we are looking at how they can be reinvigorated or given a second opportunity. We are also working on and studying the issue of housing but I don’t think it has to be a substitute. Otherwise, we would encourage an inertia of gradually closing shops in the neighbourhoods and we don’t think this would be good. We need to work to ensure that retail is present in all neighbourhoods. Albert Closas: You reject the idea that there are unstoppable dynamics and shops that will never reopen. You still think they will. Ada Colau: No, that’s not the case. Some premises will never reopen, of course. I wasn’t talking in absolute terms. What I’m saying is that we must have shops in every neighbourhood. Albert Closas: The survey didn’t refer to all premises. It suggested turning around 10,000 empty premises out of a total of 30,000 into housing. Ada Colau: We are committed to working at a local scale, without maximalist solutions. This is yielding results, perhaps very slowly, and we’ll need time to have more global figures. We’ll

try to ensure that all shops remain open, but we don’t oppose some of them becoming homes. We are carrying out careful local work with the district councils, using all the tools we have such as Barcelona Activa and shop by shop, activity by activity, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, market by market, to see what can be reactivated, what other activity could replace an old one that no longer works and doesn’t need to be maintained. Or in some cases to pursue activities other than retail. Albert Closas: Finally on this issue, we are in a European conference and when you travel through Europe you see this dynamic quite often. I don’t know if Barcelona must at least try to be different. Ada Colau: Barcelona has this treasure that we need to defend, but it is not a romantic idea. Barcelona’s citizens are very aware of this treasure we have in retail and a unique network of markets. We must warmly congratulate the technical and political teams that have preceded us and made it possible. We have a net of markets in the neighbourhoods that is a real treasure and makes them a pole of attraction and dynamisation for the shops around them. We must preserve this treasure and, in fact, many visitors greatly value it. It is a distinguishing feature of Barcelona. We probably lack many things that other capitals have in terms of monuments, for example, but we have unique assets and a city identity. This is the life in the neighbourhoods, which is directly linked to the commercial fabric. This is our city model and, therefore, we are not defending a commercial activity in a romantic sense. We are

talking of defending its economic activity, its Mediterranean way of life, in the street, and we see that our city is more cohesive, safer. When you speak with major international investors, even in the most modern activities – such as a satellite company that this year has established itself in Barcelona –, one of the fundamental elements they mention in the decision to come here is the level of talent, the innovative and technological ecosystem, but also the safety of a city where you enjoy walking through its streets and neighbourhoods. A cohesive city. It is not only the economic model of the city but also this social function, this cohesion and life in the neighbourhoods. When you think of macrocities, such as the American ones, there are many suburban areas, with lots of houses but no shops; these are insecure places of where you don’t see yourself walking along the street with everybody enclosed in their homes. This is not our city model. Albert Closas: It never has been but globalisation and digitalisation are leading to it. Ada Colau: It happens if we don’t preserve the distinctive features of the city, our identity, which are what attracts people to visit us and invest in our city. This is not a romantic argument. It is a strategic future commitment. Albert Closas: We link it to digitalisation, to the world of Internet, Amazonisation, to retail. How are we coping with this? Ada Colau: This is another issue we have to work on. It is a powerful issue. We can’t only work on this from the city of Barcelona. This

is a clear metropolitan issue because the big department stores and many of these platforms are establishing themselves in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. And we must work to ensure that it is not one thing against the other and that retail can see what opportunities this e-commerce can offer. To see how to combine its irreplaceable differential feature, which is knowledge, trust, personalised service, and so on, with the technological issue, Internet, and with all the business that has emerged around it. And then there is the issue of sustainability, which weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll have to work on extensively. It has been a very quick change, in a short period of time, and issues such as mobility and pollution are crucial. Albert Closas: Do you think that it is possible that everybody will end up buying on Amazon? Ada Colau: In a context of futuristic science fiction, it is. For me, it is not at all desirable. I think that the presence of these companies is a reality we have to work with because they are here. Denying reality is pointless. It is a type of commerce that exists and we must see how it plays out. But I insist, this differential feature of retail, presence, trust, personalised service, will not have competition if it manages to update technologically, and it has a future in our city. We must see how we combine one with the other. It also has to do with the issue of department stores. They can be department stores but also small shops. Albert Closas: Has this started to happen in Barcelona? Ada Colau: Yes, there have been some experiences

of premises acting as intermediate warehouses so that there can be a more sustainable transfer and transportation of goods, using tricycles, bicycles, etc. This generates a number of trips that a priori is unsustainable. And more so now, when one of the main challenges we have is pollution. Albert Closas: There is also the issue of taxes. There are taxes from all the administrations. And it is a common complaint from shops that have to pay all taxes while setting up a shop online is completely free. Ada Colau: These are big changes that have taken place in a very short time. They must be worked on. And it has to be done with the Spanish Ministry and the Government of Catalonia. We donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to see everything as difficulties and unfair competition. What we have to examine is which part of this technological change can be put at the service of retail, which can incorporate it as an opportunity and benefit from these innovations and changes. There are increasingly more experiences, even of highly specialised and unique shops. Some days ago, I was in Creu Coberta, and they showed me different examples, such as a small bridal gown shop which, through the networks, through Instagram, had got customers from all over the world who come to that small corner of the neighbourhood to buy. This would be a small example, among many others. It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mean defending oneself against the spread of Internet which, in this case, can even enhance this business that has distinctive features and is irreplaceable. Albert Closas: When I go out with my children, I see that shops that have become very fashionable

and well frequented despite being in a very concealed alley. Ada Colau: Yes, it is about looking at these dynamics and whether they generate synergies, and benefit from them so that it is an asset rather than competition. Albert Closas: An issue that is almost never discussed but is a perennial is opening times. There are people who still say that when you travel to Madrid everything is open, and here in Barcelona on Sunday everything is closed. Ada Colau: There are many different views on this issue, as usual. We believe that the commercial activity must be sustainable and so there must be rational opening times, which are compatible with people’s lives. Local shops are making enough effort because they work more hours than anyone, opening almost every day of the week and with very long hours without having this imposed on them, which only big chains and shops can do. Once again this creates competition. We have to talk about it. There can be some special days when shops are open but it has to be agreed with the existing shops, which in the end are the ones that have to do it. We can carry out some trials but if the days selected don’t work, we have to revise it. But above all we must bear in mind who is making the greatest effort in terms of opening times. Perhaps I’m a bit old

fashioned, but I’m one of those who think that not everything has to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We have always had opening times so that life can be lived. We want a city in which life is compatible with economic activity. Albert Closas: Employers and trade unions always agree on this issue. Finally, this is a European conference, and Barcelona is a European benchmark, but I don’t know if you, as someone who travels a lot and is in regular contact with European cities, can give us an idea of a European city that is doing things that we can emulate here. Ada Colau: Specifically in retail issues? Albert Closas: Yes. Ada Colau: It’s hard to say. What I have is the feedback that they give me. Barcelona is greatly admired for its diverse shopping experience, so polycentric because of its markets. The first year I was mayoress I went to a big food summit in Milan, which in the end is a Mediterranean city and shares a model with us more than other cities. People expressed great admiration for Barcelona and its uniqueness. On this specific issue, we have little to envy. Albert Closas: During the conference we’ll have time to debate this and other issues. Let’s stop here, thank you very much.

Commerce, culture and tourism

Moderator: Josep Xurigué Speakers: Cathy Parker, José Antonio Donaire, Alessandro Tortelli i Gabriel Jené

Josep Xurigué Doctor in Political Science (UAB) and responsible for the Strategic Dynamization of Fundació Barcelona Comerç. He is a technician responsible for the Strategic Dynamization of the Fundació Barcelona Comerç. Doctor in Political Science (UAB) and Professor of Local Government and Innovation (UOC). He has been a researcher at the European University Institute of Florence. He has specialized in the study of the city and the socioeconomic impacts of globalization in its development. Consultant for proximity trade and municipal markets. He has done analysis and support work for commercial and associative dynamics in different Catalan cities.

Cathy Parker Professor of retail and marketing enterprise at Manchester Metropolitan University. Cathy Parker is a professor of retail and marketing enterprise at Manchester Metropolitan University, where she leads and contributes to a number of commercial and research projects, in the areas of retailing, marketing and place management. She is Chair of the Institute of Place Management , the professional institute for all those involved in making better places. Cathy is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Place Management and Development, published by Emerald Group Publishing Ltd and is Adjunct Professor at Institute for Regional Development, University of Tasmania and Visiting Professor, Higher School of Economics, Russia.

Alessandro Tortelli Professor of tourism disciplines at the Marco Polo Technical Institute of Tourism. Professor de disciplines turístiques a l’Institut Tècnic de Turisme Marco Polo de Professor of tourism disciplines at the Marco Polo Technical Institute of Tourism. Scientific Director of the Center for Tourism Studies, research institute and training agency in the tourism sector. Coordinator of all the research projects of the Center Studi Turistici from 2000 until today. Author of several publications of scientific and collaborative education in some magazines in the sector. He was president of the Florence Convention Bureau from February 2008 to December 2009 and member of the National Tourist Commission of Auto Club Italy from May 2002 to December 2007. He is an ordinary member of AIEST (International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism) since 1990.

Gabriel Jené Entrepreneur, CEO of La Mallorquina and President of Barcelona Shopping City. President of Comertia (the Catalan Retail Family Business Association) between 2002 and 2006, 2006, he is a member of the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona, Tourism of Barcelona and Retail Commission of the Economists’ College.

BIG DATA; BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF USE OFSPACES TO MAKEBETTER DECISIONS Cathy Parker

Josep Xurigué, Doctor in Political Science, leads a debate with four international experts. From Manchester, Cathy Parker, Professor of Marketing and Retail; from Florence, Alessandro Tortelli, Professor of Tourism Disciplines, and from Spain, José Antonio Donaire, Professor from the Faculty of Tourism at the University of Girona, and Gabriel Jené, President of Barcelona Shopping City and of Barcelona Oberta. Barcelona’s tourism and culture model is in constant evolution and acts as a reference for Manchester and Florence, each with its own particularities. In other words, local retail and culture can form an unquestionably successful partnership. The English professor expressed her appreciation for the invitation and talked about the importance of making good decisions in the local field in order to properly understand the different contexts and how to get the most from data to make more solid local decisions and be able to find a good balance between commerce, culture and tourism.

In the United Kingdom there are many empty retail premises in city centres. The Mayoress of Barcelona said that many retail premises that are now empty should be redeveloped.

On different roundtables, we talked about good practices. From the United Kingdom, some bad praxis were highlighted, revealing many problems in our cities, partly explained because no balanced answers have been found.

The professor argued that indiscriminately building shopping centres on the outskirts should stop. Wrexham is a town in north Wales with 60,000 inhabitants. One of its most important problems is that it has many empty premises in the centre due to an excess of shopping centres on the outskirts. We need to avoid this problem by trying to build fewer shopping centres.

If we analyse the issue of retail, we first notice that many negative decisions have been made in the United Kingdom. 20% of sales in the UK are now made online, which has had a very negative impact on local shops, but less than the impact of sales in shopping centres outside urban centres.

In another case, Edinburgh has a population of about 500,000 inhabitants and has to face a challenge. At certain times of the year, it experiences tourism overcrowding. It has nine times more tourists than the resident population in the city centre.

Barcelona has to cope with a proportion of approximately five tourists for each resident in the city centre. Although the absolute number of visits is greater, if weighted, the problem is most acute in Edinburgh. This situation leads to a tourist overcapacity and a deficit in health facilities and other services and infrastructure to serve this number of visitors. Another special situation is found in a town 30 kilometres south of Manchester that the professor knows personally as she lives there: Macclesfield. With 50,000 inhabitants, it was a very important industrial manufacturing centre in the 18th century but it has been built on the back of local retail. This town has a rich architectural heritage, such as a 200-year old factory that was one of the first textile schools. A facility that was open only on Sundays. Now this building has been given a different use, with a small cinema and some small shops while maintaining the original fittings and fixtures. However, in Macclesfield there was a project to turn this old factory into a modern mall with an investment of 90 million euros. It was a disproportionate project, and the town’s residents joined the fight to prevent its development and the heritage was preserved for an appropriate use. Very few of the town’s population had frequented the very ugly multicinema auditoriums. In another vein, the professor explained how new technologies provide us with profiles of the city’s users, what times they visit and what they do, information that allows us to analyse what is happening.

Her team worked with a company that collects data on pedestrians from 163 towns and cities in the United Kingdom. The behaviour of users can be followed in the different time periods, providing information on how urban centres are being used. This data has been collected since 2006 on a very diverse sample of UK municipalities. This interesting information provides indicators on new trends and retail habits and urban use of central areas. One of the first conclusions drawn by Professor Parker’s team is that the way the cities and towns of the United Kingdom are classified is neither appropriate nor up to date. Now a system is used based on square metres of commercial area, which is not useful at the moment. There are many retail centres that sell online and there are large commercial operators that have also closed their premises or use them for other purposes. Changing the criterion and classifying cities according to their population polarised them between large cities and small towns and was not a profitable system. In order to optimally plan urban spaces and their infrastructures, data is required on the number of visitors; especially as infrastructures are not easily transferable. The study considered it more interesting to examine the patterns of use of cities. And based on this criterion a classification of four types of cities was created. Work was carried out with mathematicians and computer scientists at the University of Cardiff, who entered the figures and tried to understand the logic of this big data. In the past, it was assumed that large or small cities had the same patterns of use at the same times of

the year. Before Christmas, for example, there are more visits to city centres. There are holiday towns that experience population expansion during the summer months. And hybrid cities that register a cluster of visitors during the day but who then go to their homes. In any case, most cities have a multifunctional nature, with hybrid uses. This interpretation helps to determine how we should manage the city and decide more reliably what type of investment is needed. There are large cities and middle-sized cities with a considerable amount of local retail, often because they have to serve a wider area. Retailers from small towns move their businesses to middle-sized cities. Cities compete with each other when they can attract a mobile population that shops in different places. There are cities, especially holiday cities, which do not provide a good range of services for their population. And the population has to travel in a period of the year when there are fewer visitors and therefore cannot adequately satisfy their needs, with the environmental impact that this behaviour entails. As a researcher, Professor Parker points out that the most interesting aspects are the decisions on urban governance that must be taken to preserve the identity of each town. There are many towns where the concentration of retail in the city centre is standardised and does not adapt to the specific needs of each town. This retail has the same image and merchandising, among others. In this respect, independent retailers need to prioritise by adapting their range of services to the needs

of each place. In small towns, the needs and patterns of behaviour of their inhabitants are often not taken into account. Thanks to the technology used, more specific patterns have been established. It is important to carry out research. The towns are suffering the consequences of the various changes mentioned. The media often asks academia for tools to understand the motivation for these transformations. We know that there are more than 201 factors that determine the success of a shopping area in an urban centre. There are factors that are more easily controlled than others with a local approach. The location of a shop, although not easy to change, or the existence of emblematic stores, are valuable aspects in this regard. In any case, Professor Parker emphasises that there are about 25 priority factors that should be analysed in each case. In the United Kingdom it has been considered that a change in business hours could have a major impact. Shops are closed at 5 pm when many people are still at work, which causes urban centres to empty at night. All this information has been collected so that retailers can understand the impact of each factor. It is important for local agents to have empirical data to share with other agents, to get to know their city better and make the best decisions. Professor Parker finally thanked the audience for the session and their enthusiasm when listening to other talks and the debate.

NEW TOURISM TRENDS AND SYNERGIES WITH COMMERCE José Antonio Donaire

This presentation is structured around four points:

and is now integrated into the logic of the destination.

1. Tourism is important in the tourist structure of society. 21% of spending on the impact of tourism (direct and indirect) in Catalonia goes to the retail sector: approximately 8 million euros per day. It is more noticeable than accommodation or transportation. Therefore, the retail and catering sector become enormously significant.

4. But this analysis should add a reflection on the hypothesis of “the idea of the posttourist”: that is, the emergence of new elements in the configuration of the new kind of tourist.

2. Today, in all the analyses, we have three models of tourism spending: the souvenir business, smaller in quantitative terms but considerable in qualitative terms, and the dialectic around the emblematic shops that define the personality of the city and the “shopping experience” concept where there are various forms of retail. 3. In this brief classical analysis, the activity of tourism in commerce has increased to the point that tourism has ceased to be a complementary activity. The tourist arrives at a destination and moreover buys, and this has become an activity at the centre of what the destination itself offers. In some important international destinations, such as Singapore, Dubai or Morocco, shopping makes up their basic offer. It has ceased to be an accessory to the main attractions

The professor from the University of Girona analysed what is happening in the classic tourism sector to understand the effects that it has on shopping.

Where is tourism heading? 1. The expectations for the growth of tourism are very high. And this is because people from OECD countries have never stopped travelling even in situations of major crisis. And, secondly, and very relevantly, because there are new sources of tourist activity. According to UNWTO forecasts, 43 million new tourists enter the scene every year, which is equivalent to the whole population of Spain or Colombia. 30 million come from developing countries and only 13 from conventional countries. There is a steady increase. Thus, tourists around the world will have increasingly distant origins. 2. The second context is global competition. In this new post-tourist map there is a notable

lack of non-tourism spaces. One of the challenges of contemporary tourism is the scarcity of non-tourism sites. The whole world is full of cities, regions, countries and territories that aspire to be tourist spaces. There are already 1,100,000 international tourists in the world. Last year there were 3,500,000 passengers on airplanes. This is the notion of what post-tourism means. It is not that tourism is growing exponentially but rather the mobility of people, ideas and goods throughout the planet. The growth of tourism is only a small effect of the extreme mobility of people, ideas and goods. The word neo-nomadism explains what it means today to be a resident, tourist or visitor.

One day the tourist looked in the mirror and didn’t like what he saw. Yet he didn’t give up tourism.

3. The third idea of this new tourism puzzle is the emergence of an increasing trend of a section of tourists who do not feel comfortable as tourists.

There is a second element: the massive presence at the destination of people who cannot or not want to be categorised as tourists or as residents. These are long-term residents who want to leave; that is, tourists who have spent a few years in a destination and are called post-bohemians (they use the city without the express intention of forming part of it but neither do they want to be tourists).

It should be noted that tourism is defined as follows: “The activities of persons travelling to andstaying in places outside their usual environment for notmore than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes.”

Tourists who do not want to be tourists There is an increasing number of websites and information for tourists who do not want to be tourists. These sites take you to places where tourists don’t go. They call themselves travellers or explorers. And they are recommended as places where they will not find tourists:

This new trend, this complexity, must be managed by the destinations. This takes us to one of the great oxymorons of tourism today: the local tourist. A tourist cannot be local because either you are a tourist or a resident. It is a way of saying: “Come to a destination and behave and buy and consume as if you weren’t a tourist. Conceal your identity as a tourist and take on the role of a local. Practise tourism without being one and behave like a local tourist.” Now they say: “Be like a local.”

And a third element (with data from the Eurobarometer), as a result of 56,000 surveys where Europeans were asked about their tourism behaviour habits. The result of the research on trends, year after year, is that the major holiday is getting shorter (two or three weeks in a holiday destination) and short holidays are multiplying. Short stays of four to five days are proliferating. If sociologists used to talk of slow

of tourist products where holiday destinations cannot compete. This is the culture of experience.

There must not be one city for tourists and another for residents. Increasingly, tourists are non-permanent residents and residents enjoy local facilities

leisure, where the aim was rest, it is now a model where, due to the symbolic value of the short time, the succession of experiences is valued. The big cities have been centres of attraction for short breaks because they can offer a catalogue

Post-tourism and its effects on commerce involves the redefinition of the concept of destination London & Partners promotes tourism in the city of London and attracts tourists, students, athletes, businesspeople, seminars, congresses... They are transforming the idea of attracting visitors through the concept of the attractive city. Now, the world is no longer defined between tourist or non-tourist cities. The struggle is between cities that are attractive and those that cannot be. Attractive enough to attract students, congresses, events and tourists. The urban brand beyond the usual tourists. In Copenhagen, they no longer talk of a tourist ‒ as if they were saying: “I get tired of distinguishing between tourists and residents” ‒ but rather of the people who are in the city today.

The selfie culture predominates On one of the US visitor websites, they tell you where the best places are to take photos to look good on social networks. It’s not about visiting the most touristic places but where you will get

the best photograph. The concept is “we are where we are.” We also define identity based on the place where we live, where we eat, where we travel, where we buy, what we visit and what we avoid.

The concept of destination is in crisis Madrid adds the Segovia aqueduct to its tourist attractions. It seems that as Madrid is small, the “sales” catalogue opens with the gardens of Aranjuez, the town of El Escorial and then “outskirts” such as Granada or Córdoba. In this way, Madrid takes over the whole of Spain to shape its brand identity. The Visit London website incorporates Windsor, Oxford and Paris... If London sells Paris, one has to ask what is meant by destination. Paris within the tourist structure of London! The destination will have to be reformulated. So there are three questions without an answer but that help reformulate the classic debate: 1. In a city where there are tourists from nearby European countries and from many other destinations, what should be done to maintain a balanced range of products and services to meet the needs and demands of such a heterogeneous public?

2. What is the point of maintaining the dialectic division between residents and tourists if no effort is made to assume the complexity of a global city (Barcelona’s problem and opportunity, for example)? People from areas close by want to visit Barcelona but we have the capacity to attract hundreds of people from different origins. A new map of the city is provided by residents who are not residents or tourists from hundreds of places all around the world. How does the commercial model deal with the issue of soft borders between the two categories? And typology is much more complex. 3. Commerce creates identity and the commitment to identity is highly recommended, but global cities have to consider what identity means when you are a global city that seeks identity when there is mobility of people, ideas and goods. Before going to a place, I have already had ideas and products generated from that place at home. We cannot pretend that this global context is not happening while we defend local identities. The solution is not just the extreme defence of the locality; it is also about reinventing the context of global local tension.

HISTORIC CENTRES AND COMMERCE: THE CASE OF FLORENCE Alessandro Tortelli

My presentation will deal with how tourism in Florence is related to culture and commerce and I will endeavour to add some elements of reflection. Cultural tourism is worthy of our attention and it now accounts for 40% of spending in comparison to 20% in the past. Overtourism is an increasingly more commonly used concept which deals with the management of people. Sometimes, we are incapable of being good managers.

centre. There has been a major discussion about moving the statue of David by Michelangelo to a more peripheral area with the aim of opening up more areas for visitors. This is very controversial. The number of people visiting Florence for its cultural assets amounts to 10 million euros and visits to museums represent takings of 13 million euros. Florence has 10 million overnight stays a year, in registered establishments alone. Focusing on the historic centre, it is even more worrying.

Florence has a great historic centre of 11 square kilometres which concentrates a large number of tourists, without forgetting the towns and villages in its surrounding area. Florence has a population of 370,000 inhabitants and 50,000 accommodation places according to official data.

There is a form of tourism that had not been studied: it will allow us to record new forms of tourism in accommodation that we cannot control. Many of the hidden structures have come to light. It is a submerged phenomenon that gives us an idea of the impact on the city.

To these places we must add those of Airbnb, with 10,400 places, or the adverts on Booking with 2,700 offers that have recently exceeded 4,112. This has changed the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s receptiveness. According to a recent study, 18% of apartments in this area are reserved for tourists. This is a new element of reflection currently under debate.

Another fact: July and August have the largest concentration of tourists, of course. 24-hour getaways are also growing thanks to the high speed train from Rome, Venice or Bologna, just as Florenceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s residents are also leaving. They often arrive by plane in Bologna, and then go to Florence.

The city has 105 museums, mostly in the historic

The Florence model is highly complex: residents,

Florence has ten million overnight stays per year in official establishments alone. If they are concentrated in the old town area, it can become very worrying.

commuters, tourists and day trippers. There are 37,000 active companies, which represents 40% of the total in the province. Retail has not changed; some categories of merchandise have but nothing else. In the old town small shops have disappeared in favour of big brands. The cost of renting is very high and only large structures, big brands, can afford it. And they are interested in having a commercial tourist showcase in Florence. The City Council has tried to limit new licences for shops in the next three years. If it had not

acted, the historic centre would have been at risk of becoming a great wine and food centre full of bars and restaurants. It is also true that businesses are setting up in other areas of the city. Day trippers spend more on eating than in shops. In the city centre there are categories of shops that only depend on tourism, which invites a reflection. Every two years we analyse how residents perceive tourism and how it impacts on their daily lives, as well as how we should respond. The residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; response is positive and they say that tourism favours the conservation of heritage. On the other hand, when asked about retail, they are negative about the retail network within the city and, above all, in the city centre, because they say that the fundamental essential services for residents have disappeared. We cannot afford this because, despite the economic value of the tourist, it should not mean losing residents. This problem is also a result of national regulations. Those who have properties find it more interesting to use Airbnb than more regulated structures. Regulation, after all, would be important. Cities should be reorganised with a connection between state and municipal regulations.

TOURIST AND COMMERCIAL ACTION IN BARCELONA Gabriel Jené

Barcelona is culture is gastronomy is commerce, is culture, is... I borrow these words from the editor of the La Vanguardia, Màrius Carol, who said that Barcelona is not a 10 in anything but a 10 in almost everything. We have an enormous heritage of fairs, congresses, cultural events, museums, art... which makes us a great power. We are very good at developing fine culture, business fairs and congresses, research, technologies, the sea, the mountains, sports, retail... We have very important heritage because we know very well how to manage the disciplines that make up our city. This comes from our Olympic era: the Olympics was a great explosion of public-private cooperation that had not existed and thus, with the thousands of volunteers who made it possible, we showed that we were an unbeatable force to carry out ever more important projects after the games were held. Yes, the Olympics were the starting point and expansion that put the city where it is. It was the starting point for the Turisme de Barcelona Consortium set up by City Council, the Chamber of Commerce and the Fundació Barcelona Promoció. And so businesspeople and the administration could sit at the same table. Mayor Maragall had the vision to enhance the Tourist Board and call on entrepreneurs to work

together to promote the city. From that moment on, the city began to become a model for the great international cities of the world. What does Barcelona tourism mean today? Promoting a busy agenda of activities linked to increasing the tourist and commercial demand of the city, working with people who travel around the world to explain what Barcelona is, attracting tourism and commerce, establishing an orderly demand and welcoming the visitor to have an excellent and different experience. Turisme de Barcelona has become a great communication agency with diverse programmes focused on the following lines of work: LGTBI+, cruises, students and families. It not only focuses on the city of Barcelona but also promotes surrounding destinations such as the mountain of Montserrat. These are the products developed at Turisme de Barcelona, which includes the Barcelona Shopping City, the Barcelona shopping programme. We represent retailers, shopping areas, shops and shopping centres, and advise on what has to be done to promote shopping in the city, always in coordination with the Directorate for Commerce which manages the Shopping City.

Priority markets United Kingdom France Italy Germany

Russia Ukraine Post-Soviet states

China Hong Kong Korea Taiwan Arab emirates Japan Canada United States Latin America Argentina Mexico Brazil

General information Barcelona is the third European city in shopping tourism. Tourists visit Barcelona for shopping before Paris and London. 40% go shopping directly... The commercial offer is ranked at 8.3. Spending on shopping is 30% of the total spending in Barcelona. 86% of visitors consider that the city is very good for shopping.

Shopping City is important in our narrative Shopping City is organised along four fundamental axes: the characteristic shopping line mainly focused on areas frequented by tourists. In 1993, it was considered necessary to extend it to other shopping areas. Union Shops are the new big challenge of Shopping City. We have a wide range of shops that attract tourists from outside the classic geographical area, interested in specific kinds of shops. Tourism needed to be democratised in other areas.

Effort should be made by everyone and especially shops that are not in tourist areas. In 1993 Passeig de Gràcia was full of banks. When someone proposed establishing the Shopping Line the idea was rejected. Experiments were out of the question. They insisted that shopping should be in the centre. But with effort and time we have achieved excellent shopping and tourist areas with a strategic vision. And this has to happen in Sarrià, Creu Coberta, Sant Antoni or Sant Andreu, which must attract tourism to avoid it being concentrated in just one area. The Shopping Line comprises 233 shops, shopping centres, department stores, associations and shopping areas. It is important to highlight the presence of new shopping areas such as CorEixample, Poblenou, Creu Coberta and Encants, which do not yet attract tourists, unlike La Rambla, Passeig de Gràcia or Rambla de Catalunya, but are working to achieve it.

Commercial models in the cities of the future

Moderator: Oriol Cesena Speakers: Salva Vendrell, AgustĂ Colom, John Griffiths i Francis Palombi.

Oriol Cesena Director of Focalizza and university professor Oriol Cesena is the director of the consultancy FOCALIZZA, a company dedicated to advice on commerce, a task that combines with teaching in different catalan universities. He is the academic director of the university postgraduate “Dinamització d’Espais Comercials Urbans” (Dynamization of Urban Commercial Spaces) at the Universitat de Girona, and author of several books and manuals on trade and markets, such as “Manual de comerç urbà. Reptes de la dinamització comercial” (Manual of urban commerce. Challenges of commercial dynamization), edited by Associació Catalana de Municipis.

Salva Vendrell President of Fundación Barcelona Comerç (eixosbcn), Vice President of Retailcat and President of Associació de Comerciants de Sarrià He works in three of the most representative entities of the local commerce of Barcelona. The lastr 10 years he combined his professional activity in the retail sector, with the profession of photographer and the family business in the catering sector. He owns one of the most emblematic bars in Barcelona, Marcel Santaló, with more than 50 years of history in the city. He is in constant training and firmly believes in the digital transformation of the world of commerce, is PS in Retail Marketing (ESIC) and Master in Digital Business (ESIC).

Agustí Colom Councilman for tourism, commerce and the marches and councils of the district of Les Corts (Barcelona). Diploma in economics and business studies and professor since 1987 in the Department of Economic Theory of the University of Barcelona, where he taught higher degrees of microeconomics and macroeconomics. He is also a member of the Governmental Commission of the Bureau of Accounts of Catalonia and has been part of the editorial committee of the magazine Economía Crítica, member of the scientific committee of ATTAC, author of various articles and collaborator on various media.

John Griffiths Co-founder and Managing Director of Rocket Science UK Ltd Co-founder and Managing Director of Rocket Science UK Ltd a small public-policy consultancy practice with offices in London and Edinburgh. John heads the London team providing a range of research, evaluation and fund-management services to clients across government, business and the voluntary sector. He is the co-author of a recent study for the Mayor of London on the Evolution of Business Improvement Districts in London.

Francis Palombi President of the Confédération des commerçants de France.. Graduate in Philosophy and diploma in IPC Commerce. He has been head of the BATA branch group, and operating director of the French subsidiary of a European group of independent traders: ANWR-International. Currently he is the president of the Confederation of merchants in France with 18 professional federations.

THE BARCELONA CASE Salva Vendrell i Agustí Colom

Oriol Cesena, university professor and manager of Focalizza, introduces some of the topics to be covered from the context of competitiveness, especially the implications of the digital world and the concept of a more liquid and much more diversified consumer. He also considers how retail develops in Europe using different models, such as Barcelona’s and its shopping areas represented by Salvador Vendrell, as President of Barcelona Comerç, and the Councillor for Commerce and Tourism Agustí Colom; the French model, which Francis Palombi introduces as President of the Confédération de Commerçants de France; and John Griffiths, British consultant expert in the BID model. The President of Barcelona Comerç begins his advocacy of Barcelona commerce by recalling some of the most relevant data that shapes the urban retail panorama. Twenty-three shopping areas that make up the Foundation in 73 neighbourhoods and 10 districts, along with 40 markets and a cumulative total of 15% of Barcelona’s GDP. Over 5,000 shops pay a membership fee and 25,000 form part of the area of influence of these shopping areas. He also points out the importance of the administrations in the necessary cooperation for the management of the shopping areas and their funding, mainly by the Government of Catalonia and Barcelona City Council. Despite highlighting its virtues, he acknowledges that the current associative retail model has some difficulties. The first is the need to grow and increasingly publicise the advantages of being a member of a shopping area. Vendrell concludes that “we should know how to build a broader associative model more representative of all,” in a clear reference to the future of an implementation of BIDs in Barcelona, in a governance model that includes organisations or residents. In this respect, he argues the need to professionalise the managers of this area: “At the beginning of the shopping areas, in the city

BARCELONA COMERÇ IN FIGURES 23 shopping areas 73 neighbourhoods and 10 districts 40 markets 15% of Barcelona’s GDP 5.000 shops pay a memership fee 25.000 shops form part of the area of influence

it was not necessary to have highly professional people to dynamise the territory. It was enough to have people who knew it well and helped us to carry out projects.” With reference to the future, Vendrell mentions the need to increasingly adapt and professionalise and to get in contact with other agents in Catalonia. “Some years ago we didn’t take them into account and now we have many other actors who are also relevant.” And

he suggests integrating them into a set of citizen values, a city brand, and a social fabric in which retail plays a key role. In this respect, he positively assesses the task carried out by Barcelona Comerç and in the current projects. As challenges, he argues that Barcelona Comerç should become a more relevant agent that enables retail to be promoted and Barcelona to become a world benchmark. He also proposes defining a model of public and private relations and collaboration, enhancing the role of retail within society and empowering it, and being able to create new shopping experiences. In relation to the last issue, he mentions the Commerce and Culture Year, held in 2018, and which involved an alliance with the cultural sector. He also mentions the initiative of the new loyalty card Viba, promoted by a series of organisations and that is gradually being implemented throughout the city. In terms of the controversial importing of BIDs, Vendrell insists that it is necessary to study and define the BID model we want for Barcelona, and that it should not be a copy of the English model. He calls for establishing alliances with the university sector and experts in order to define the new urban spaces. He also advocates having an observatory to obtain reliable data on how the sector is evolving. And, above all, to continue in the task of raising citizen awareness in terms of cohesion, safety, lighting, cleaning and everything that commerce represents for the neighbourhoods. In summary, Vendrell mentions the professionalization and empowerment of the sector, the management of the territory, the new models of public-private cooperation and the importance of being a benchmark of the economic promotion of the city.

Agustí Colom, Councillor for Commerce, Tourism and Markets at Barcelona City Council, highlights the importance of the Barcelona model: the model of the shopping areas, which, as he explains, “has been a success.” In Barcelona, it involves over 21,000 shops and 50,000 services in the streets, with a varied composition, as varied as the different neighbourhoods that make up Barcelona. This relevant data had already been provided by Mayoress Ada Colau and reveals the importance of shopping in the neighbourhoods. 94% of residents buy fresh products close to their homes, and 70% buy non-food products. Colom introduces a new issue: if Barcelona receives between 15 and 17 million tourists annually, this means that 10-15% of the daily population of the city lives there temporarily, even for one day. Colom insists on the benefits of local retail in terms of the shopping experience, which is what the citizen and visitor also seek. “Commerce also involves a relational, cohesive space, which generates an activity and a citizen network around it. Buyers have an experience that goes beyond the mere financial transaction,” and promotes loyalty, confidence and local retail as part of citizen assets. “Barcelona has been built on this. It is attractive for its climate, gastronomy and culture, but also for its way of life.” With respect to new technologies, he warns about automatic decision-making on the Internet of Things, which will substantially change how we buy products, and therefore we must ready for it. Moreover, he points out the need to link tourism and commerce, which forms part of this Barcelona model. He provides as an example the problems related to the FC Barcelona Museum, which, despite being the most visited museum in Catalonia, lacks in its surroundings shops to serve all the visitors arriving in the area as the existing ones do not

Commerce also involves a relational, cohesive space, which generates an activity and a citizen network around it. Buyers have an experience that goes beyond the mere financial transaction,” and promotes loyalty, confidence and local retail as part of citizen assets.

benefit from this location. Or the Sagrada Família Market, which despite being located close to a monument visited by six million people annually, is almost unnoticed by tourists. These are some of the challenges he mentions to integrate the tourism flows and strengthen the city’s shopping areas. The management challenge is another element emphasised by Colom. He again focuses on the need to improve the professionalization of the shopping areas. Moreover, he points out that it is necessary to approach the issue of funding, particularly the case of shops that, despite not contributing to the funding of the associations of shopping areas, benefit from their activities. In this respect, it is necessary to find specific formulas for the city, such as in the United Kingdom with the BIDs. In this respect, he calls for a common reflection between the sector and the administration because the applicable legislation is currently being prepared. The shopping area model, a governance structure halfway between a street and a neighbourhood,

enables the city to be successfully managed. Colom argues that if this unit is increasingly smaller, there will be less capacity for decision and action, and this is why he mentions the example of the loyalty card Viba, promoted by some shopping areas and markets but which, with public support, can be extended to the whole city. “Viba is an example of how several shopping areas are capable of finding a common position. Fragmentation enables diverse realities to be recognised but at the same time we need to maintain a structure that enables us to promote general tools.” Before concluding his presentation he notes some challenges and defines how they evolve: how the city can provide continuity in the cases of streets and shopping areas that have lost it, the improvement of training of employees and owners, the preservation of emblematic shops, and so on. Finally, he appreciates the opportunity that the conference has given him to get to know other models and share them.

THE ANGLOSAXON MODEL OF BIDS John Griffiths

The expert John Griffiths, member of Rocket Science, is a consultant in economic and social research and has carried out important work studying the model of the Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), both in London, where he leads some of them, and throughout the United Kingdom, where there are almost 300. The first reference provided by Griffiths dates back around 15 years, when the first began to be applied in the United Kingdom, after the lessons learnt in Canada. To this end, between 2004 and 2005 a rather strict regulatory framework was produced. In this respect, the BIDs were created in a specific neighbourhood for a period of five years and later the citizens and economic agents could vote to decide if it should be maintained. As Griffiths argues, some BIDs did not surpass the second vote five years later, which means that they do not always work and that the degree of success depends on the number of agents, structure, management, companies leading it, and so on. He recommends that a BID should include between 400 and 500 economic units that, in the case of the United Kingdom, means a turnover of half a million euros per year, which covers a series of services for the area and the neighbourhood. The BID in the United Kingdom serves the administration to stop investing directly in those areas because, once the BID is implemented, this structure is in charge of investments and internal promotion. In a period such as the start of the 21st century, with historic cutbacks in the United

Kingdom in key sectors, the implementation of the BIDs reduces spending by the administration, hence, according to Griffiths, there are so many of them in the United Kingdom. One of the characteristics he notes is the double line of work of the BIDs. On the one hand, collaboration between them mainly for the neighbouring areas, while they compete to attract companies that can contribute; on the other, one of the common shortcomings is that the BIDs do not always have the necessary funding to meet expectations while, in the last three years, the economic burden that companies must face to maintain the BID has increased, resulting in some reticence. In terms of the challenges of the BID, Griffiths points out the need for professionals that have the necessary training and skills to manage it, which is lacking. This in part is due to the fact that BIDs are not only tools of economic invigoration but require knowledge of the urban planning of the environment, social management, the neighbourhood networks and the community and mediation groups between agents, among others. On some occasions, mediation is necessary. According to Griffiths, there are cases in which residents can detect that some companies that form part of the BID want to dominate economic activity, not only for the benefit of the community. With respect to threats, he notes that it is difficult to get companies to vote for paying more taxes. However, this is increasingly necessary: â&#x20AC;&#x153;As they are required to make a bigger economic

BIDs and Crossrail Crossrail 1 Crossrail 2 BIDs Town centres: Interational centres Metropolitan town centres Major town centres District town centres Contains CLA data, UKOGLv2, Ordnance Survey data Crown Copyright and database right 2016. Ordance Survey 100032216

commitment, they wonder if it makes sense to continue existing as a BID.â&#x20AC;? Griffiths mentions that, at present, it is being studied whether BIDs should pay a tourist and accommodation tax. The expert also analyses other problems concerning the companies that leave the BID, which are not prepared to pay more, and some town centres that are being emptied of shops. To this end, he proposes new usages, in a commercial mix that includes art, culture and leisure centres. In this respect, Griffiths attaches great importance to the open occupation process initiated by the BIDs themselves to give a use to all these premises. Other initiatives that the BIDs have proposed are the recovery of abandoned spaces, the creation of business incubators, hubs, the transformation of rail tracks, the establishment of facilities for museums and culture, the organisation of arts

festivals and city events, and so on. He also finds major differences between the projects promoted by tenants, focused on the short term, for quick profits, and the projects promoted by the owners of the buildings, aimed at the long term that can reinvigorate the neighbourhood. Finally, he stresses the need to improve the accountability of the BIDs and self-criticism when seeing if a specific BID works or not. â&#x20AC;&#x153;While there are several typologies of BIDs, we need different professionals that know how to manage the areas that compete with each other in terms of funding, tourism, visitor attraction, and so on.â&#x20AC;? He stresses that, in terms of transparency, one of the final challenges is that the economically positive management of the BID must enable residents to take advantage of the benefits.

THE FRENCH COOPERATIVE MODEL Francis Palombi

Francis Palombi begins his presentation by thanking the conference’s organisers, especially Mr Vendrell, Mr Llanas and Mr Bolettinari, with whom years ago they began the project Vitrines d’Europe. According to Palombi, the conference offers hope for the future of European local retail. The Confédération des Commerçants de France represents around 350,000 companies with around 600,000 sales points and almost one million employees. The French model is partially inspired by the English BID model but with some particularities. Palombi notes the notable difference with Barcelona, both in terms of urban planning and retail. The initial name of Vitrines d’Europe referred to the union of the city centres of Europe because it was taken for granted that retail was exclusive to the city centre. In contrast, Barcelona breaks this centre and periphery model and commits to a multicentrality of retail through the neighbourhoods. In France, according to Palombi, there was a “profound imbalance” between city centres and peripheries, thereby making an adapted BID model necessary in the form of a cooperative of economic interest. From the outset, however, he also points out the need to bring together not only the companies and economic agents but also the remaining actors that play a key role in the country. He also notes that in the French cities there are many empty premises after a gradual crisis of commerce, which made them react. “We found that there were population displacements,

that in the centre there were not enough parking areas, and the economic actors were isolated.” This was due to the lack of the city’s internal governance. In parallel, Palombi identifies the problems of overexploitation and lack of good management of the peripheries. The imbalance between centre and periphery was particularly negative. Palombi suggests some solutions that could be applied in an environment where legally it was not possible to oblige anyone to pay a fee. He mentions several levels, ranging from retail bureaus to retailers’ associations, notably stressing the involvement in 70% of these cooperatives of independent actors, often not linked to a specific shop: independent actors, self-employed professionals, craftspeople and people working in the arts sector. He even mentions the case of unemployed residents who become members of some cooperatives. The model is inspired by the Canadian model of the 1980s, when the city centres saw some major brands leave to move to the periphery and organised themselves to create some economic tools that enabled them to ensure the balance between centre and periphery. For this reason, Palombi speaks of the Canadian “areas of economic development”, with a very democratic character and that worked through the creation of economic parameters with a compulsory fee, such as the BIDs. When introducing them into France, where there was no compulsory fee, they chose a cooperative model, a “cooperative of

tool was created.” A tool that, according to Palombi, makes real and effective decisions concerning the territory.

In France, where there was no obligatory quota, a cooperative model was adopted, an “economic development cooperative” that enabled businesspeople, but also shops, professionals and wage earners, to come together.

economic development”. According to Palombi, the cooperation enabled not only entrepreneurs to be united but also shops, professionals, wage earners... “Small retailers joined and an economic

In terms of the political and administrative impact, the President of the Confédération des Commerçants de France mentions the creation of the city centres action plan, managed by the newly-created Ministry for Social Cohesion, with the aim of being implemented in 220 small cities around the country. The plans are very innovative, to the point that they enable management, within each area, of accommodation, travel, infrastructures, digital services, and so on. With respect to the impact of digitalisation, Palombi is realistic when mentioning the slowness with which the SMEs are doing their homework. In this respect, he points out that the tools mentioned serve not only to attract clients to the shops but also to achieve more social cohesion. “It is not only about shopping online but mainly for people to know about these shops,” concludes Palombi, who acknowledges the specialisation of the self-employed, thanks to whom it was possible to develop a digitalisation plan for each of the spaces. Finally, he notes the need to have laws that endorse the BIDs or these cooperatives and their implementation throughout the territory and praises their optional payment model. “I’m convinced that what does not compel but is voluntary can only work well and for a quite a long time.”

Impact of commerce in the urban landscape

Moderator: Laura Lรณpez Speakers: Mikael Colville-Andersen, Isabel Roig i Isaac Albert.

Laura López Director of RETAILcat. ADE and MBA with specialization in business policy for ESADE. Currently, she is the director of RETAILcat, Unió d’Entitats de Retail de Catalunya, an organization that promotes projects for the implementation of strategy and transformation, as well as advice and training in family companies in the retail and distribution sector. Previously, he had been a Facilitator Change in retail projects, director of the Trade Promotion area at CCAM (Generalitat de Catalunya) and director of ANCECO (National Association of Purchasing Centers).

Mikael Colville-Andersen Adviser of cities and companies on urbanism. Mikael Colville-Andersen is one of the leading global voices in urbanism. He advises cities and businesses in how to embrace and design bicycle and pedestrian friendly streets in order to improve urban life. He is known for his pioneering philosophies about simplifying urban planning and how cities and towns should be designed instead of engineered. Mikael is an author and the host of the urbanism tv series The Life-Sized City and he inspires with his keynotes around the world about how to make cities better.

Isabel Roig Director General of BCD (Barcelona Design Center). Isabel Roig is Director General of BCD (Barcelona Design Center) since June 2000. She has been a member of the European Design Leadership Board of the European Commission (2011-2012) and President of BEDA Bureau of European Design Associations (2013-2015). She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the global network World Design Weeks, as founder of the Barcelona Design Week.

Isaac Albert Deputy Delegate of Commerce of the Diputació de Barcelona. Deputy Delegate of Commerce of the Diputació de Barcelona. Mediator and financial consultant of the Department of Economics and Business Organization of the University of Barcelona. Master in Financial Management from the Barcelona Institute of Applied Economics.

FROM BARCELONA TO COPENHAGEN: THE RETURN TO THE SLOW CITY Mikael Colville-Andersen

The roundtable “Impact of commerce in the urban landscape. What role can and should play” is one of the issues running through the conference and refers to how commerce forms an integral part of the cities’ urbanism strategies. The concept of smart city, the socially responsible shopping areas and outstanding concepts related to the integration of commerce, tourism and economy in the framework of social urbanism will appear throughout the sessions. The organisers of the conference greatly appreciate the presence of Mikael Colville-Andersen as the main speaker because commercial urbanism has been, since the start of Vitrines d’Europe, one of its common themes. Laura López, Director of RETAILCat, moderates the roundtable. To begin with, López summarises the importance of RETAILCat, a recently created association – only a couple of years ago –, whose aim is to act as the backbone of commerce in the cities and stress their uniqueness. López calls Mikael Colville-Andersen the Messi of urbanism. He is one of the current major experts in urbanism, sustainability, mobility and commerce as a key element of social urbanism. Another of the participants in the roundtable is Isabel Roig, Director General of BCN Design Centre, who provides local vision and experience in commerce in cities. Finally, in terms of institutional representation, we have Isaac Albert, representative of Commerce at Barcelona Provincial Council. Mikael Colville-Andersen’s talk acts as a proactive catalyser of the urban policies currently applied in cities such as Copenhagen, Barcelona, Paris or some Canadian cities, where this expert has an office and regularly works. His entertaining, dynamic and informed presentation focused on the public policies that have specifically enabled improvement of sales in local shops. One of the first points he makes concerns the

specific question that the organisation asked him to develop: “What is the role of retail in the urban field?” Colville suggests speaking of how we can improve the city through retail, and this is one of the core ideas of his presentation. According to Colville, commerce is one of the key elements of urban quality. This idea, later developed by Isabel Roig through some of the key projects produced by BCN Design Centre, and also by Isaac Albert

in his theoretical summary of the retail policies in our city, runs throughout the roundtable. Retail is no longer an element inherent to the streets, which may or may not exist. It now plays a key role as a necessary element for quality streets and modern cities. According to Colville, cities are “big organic things” and, therefore, everything based on practical urbanism has an effect on people. In this respect, he points out two elements that he considers paramount: the use of the urban space and mobility. When Colville explains that his work is to “help people move better, from the workplace to school, from home to shops,” he does so from the perspective of efficiency and modernity. When we attend one of Michael Colville’s talks, it is worth noticing how he convinces the members of the audience with illustrations that show the change of paradigm, of model, that has been modifying our cities over the last few years. He mainly uses pictures and data. A firm advocator of the bicycle, he presents the example of its increased use in cities such as Copenhagen or Barcelona, despite the differences. 1,300 people can use a bicycle lane every hour. 12 bikes can be parked in the space occupied by one vehicle. Finally, he shows pictures of the centres of the cities described, with photographs taken a century ago, half a century ago and today. The model is again one of pedestrianisation and bicycles. According to Colville, there is a return to slow cities after having made the mistake of ceding room to the car. The pattern is changing, as he notes on five

The shops in streets where there is a bicycle lane have increased sales by between 30% and 50%.

occasions. And in the current pattern, the pedestrianised street is the best example. He tells us about people-friendly streets, which had been occupied by vehicles for almost a century.

How to monetise the slow city There are also some well-known myths, as Colville calls them. One of the most controversial is that bicycle lanes make shops lose money. Another is that customers go to shops by car. Colville notes that these two statements by retailers are wrong and come from old concepts that, like patterns, changed years ago. Colville’s data, taken from his experience, studies and surveys, shows quite the contrary. To illustrate this, he points out that the shops in streets where there is a bicycle lane have increased sales by between 30% and 50%. He proves this by explaining that shops in New York City’s Eight Avenue increased their profits by 47% after a bicycle lane was installed and that in Copenhagen 68% of citizens move around by bicycle or on foot, and cyclists spend 2,000 million euros annually in street-level shops.

This is the result of two main factors. People who cycle spend more money in street-level shops because their mobility patterns are much more flexible. They stop when they want, travel at between 10 and 15 kilometres per hour and, therefore, they can see the offers and look at the shops they pass by. This data contrasts with cars. People who drive usually shop in supermarkets and do so on Saturday. Moreover, at 45 kilometres an hour – a common speed – the tunnel effect is created for the driver and it is impossible to distinguish shops and offers. Their mobility pattern is very static. Hence the idea that cyclists are better consumers because they spend in local shops.

The power of citizens There are several elements in Michael Colville’s argument that inspire hope in human beings and in more sustainable living formulas. He provides examples of what is happening in cities when citizens, by themselves, start to recover spaces, create urban vegetable gardens and places to sit, meet or have a coffee. Colville notes that “citizens realise they have power” and this is why the pattern of the cities has begun to change to the benefit of friendlier spaces for citizens. Other data illustrates this evolution very well. According to Colville, there are increasingly more young people who do not get a driving licence because they are more aware of healthy lifestyles, of sustainability, and because reflections and demands of individuals have contributed to the presence of more public transport and even the return of the tram.

Citizen mobility in the case of the bicycle also entails changes not only for local urban commerce but big companies and distribution. He explains the case of IKEA, which found out that 26% of its customers arrive by bicycle and public transport. Thus, instead of building new car parks, they promoted bike parks and put at the disposal of customers bikes to carry the material they had bought. Another piece of striking data provided by Colville is that 51% of everything that can be carried through the city can be done on foot or by bicycle. This is why he predicts that the logistical and mobility patterns will change dramatically in the next few years. Finally, in the case of citizens’ power to change mobility patterns, he also provides another piece of data: 1,500 cities in the world currently have bike rental companies. Young people, when visiting those cities, no longer ask if they have bike rental companies, they ask directly where they are. Millennials take it for granted. To conclude, he suggests that in modern cities very soon pollution will improve because we will need fewer parking areas. If we improve pavements and bicycle lanes, we will have more beautiful streets, people will buy more and the streets will be slower. Hence, slow life. According to Colville, in 2020, 85% of streets in Paris will have a 30 kilometre per hour limit for vehicles. Going slower is good for retail, for the street and for citizens. After such a dynamic presentation by Mikael Colville-Andersen, Laura López, as moderator, notes the key role of mobility for cities and commerce and repeats that bicycles will help us to sell more in the future.

CREATIVITY AND DESIGN IN THE URBAN LANDSCAPE Isabel Roig

Isabel Roig’s contribution to the conference includes a set of initiatives carried out by BCN Design Centre and applied to retail, particularly Barcelona’s, which are a set of good practices for invigorating it from a creative and innovative perspective that enables work on cross-over issues of urbanism and design that improves the service that shops offer to citizens and customers. The controversy and the usual strain between the Department of Urban Landscape and the Department of Retail is not new, particularly in terms of the regulation of elements on façades. However, after years of discussion between sectors, in a highly regulated city in terms of urban landscape such as Barcelona, Isabel Roig proposes other ideas that, within the field of design, enable commerce dynamisation to be strengthened. Roig explains that one of the objectives of the Centre is to strengthen the Barcelona brand related to design and promote creativity and innovation in the city’s retail sector. In this respect, it is essential for public and private institutions to constantly propose systems to improve the image and sales process in the city’s shops themselves. And in this case, by relating it to Barcelona’s characteristic values, such as design and architecture. Roig considers that urbanism defines the model of

The Barcelona brand linked to design has to be strengthened, and creativity and innovation in the commercial sector of the city must be fostered. It is fundamental for public and private institutions to constantly propose systems for improving the image and sales process in the city’s shops

I demand dialogue between retailers, designers and architects who contributed to improving the sales areas, with initiatives where creative talent offers retailers a new space, and consumers a different shopping experience to the usual one.

retail, and several examples from her experience endorse this idea. One of the products made by BCN Design Centre is an app and a map distributed in several periods of the year to help publicise shops that provide a different experience in terms of heritage, architecture or product value. This initiative, complementary to the municipal initiative “Establiments emblemàtics” (Emblematic Shops), the private initiative “Botigues Singulars” (“Outstanding Shops”) or Turisme de Barcelona’s “Unique Shops”, emphasises the value in the field of local design, such as a flower shop in an old industrial warehouse in the neighbourhood of Sants, new shops that offer local products in bulk in the neighbourhood of Sarrià, launderettes that rent spaces for lectures or presentations or the case of the shop Raima located in a 16th century palace, in which the unique space provides added values such as difference and identity. Isabel Roig also speaks of the initiative carried out by linking the Christmas lights in 10 shop windows in a pedestrian area in the neighbourhood

of Sarrià to lighting projects produced by design students and that will be repeated next year in Gràcia and Sant Andreu, two other shopping areas in the city of Barcelona. In this respect, citizen design initiatives have a direct relation with other roundtables in the European Conference, mainly those on Commerce, Tourism and Culture, and stress the idea that commerce dynamisation can be unquestionably linked to culture, which becomes the perfect ally for improving sales. One of the ideas set out during the conference is that the shops in which things happen will improve their sales in comparison to others that only sell things. Finally, Isabel Roig calls for dialogue between retailers and designers and architects that have contributed to improving the sales spaces with initiatives in which creative talent offers the retailer a new space and the consumer a sales experience different from the usual one. She also notes that these experiences are not exclusive to the cities and the retail areas but also take place in many less populated towns, and she uses the Rec d’Igualada project as an example.

COMMERCE IN RESILIENT CITIES Isaac Albert

Isaac Albert, representative of Commerce at Barcelona Provincial Council, begins his presentation with a proposition: “Tell me the city you want and I’ll tell you which kind of commerce you need. Or tell me which kind of commerce you have and I’ll tell you which city you’ll end up with.” According to Albert, there are many controversies concerning the future of cities. Although they are undoubtedly the future of humanity, it is clear that they cannot face many of the challenges posed by societies alone. Cohesion, sustainability and identity are the three tools we have to face social problems. In this respect, commerce plays a key role. Isaac Albert explains the public policies implemented in recent years in retail in Catalonia, particularly with reference to the local world and how they have recently evolved, leaving aside highly sectorialised policies with the aim of integrating local retail from a much more global perspective. An example of this is the inclusion of commerce in citizen social projects, with senior citizens or children, where it is a basic element of social cohesion. Some years ago, when the administrations talked about strengthening traditional retail, enhancing shopping areas and making commerce more dynamic to help sales, there was a lack of specific legislation. This, according to Albert, caused a lack of satisfaction in the Catalan retail sector because a very valid but difficult to implement discourse was advocated. He talks about non-specific policies, which he describes

as spontaneous, when administrations acted passively on pressure from retailers. Faced with this situation, at present there are more reactive policies that develop the values of local retail, social responsibility, urban quality and retail quality. This is also the case of the urban retail centres, which in the past were defined as streets with a broad range of products and services and that are now considered strategic models of collective management, business management, concern for comfort, for the sales experience and with great attention to elements inherent to retail, such as parking areas or waste management.

Today there are reactive policies, which develop the value of local retail, social responsibility, urban quality and the quality of the retailers.

Commercial activity has to be conceptualised not only as an urban economy but also as the construction of the urban space, which puts commerce at the centre of a new agenda.

More commerce, more urban quality One of the notable elements in Isaac Albert’s presentation is the need to conceptualise commercial activity not only as an urban economy but as a construction of the urban space, which, he explains, puts retail at the centre of a new agenda. And he points out four factors to be taken into account in this new consideration of retail. First, urban sustainability,

not only environmental but also social and cultural, understood in a broad sense. Second, the resistance of the urban space and its capacity to change faced with transformations and crises. Third, community and social development of the specific field, area, BID, and its relation with retail and, finally, with the redefinition of urban policies based on change and recycling of urban areas. Commerce will have a leading role in this because no one will be able to speak of an attractive public space, of a quality residential area or sustainable urban design, without taking retail into account. The last concept noted by Albert is resilience, the city’s capacity to resist threats and adapt. If commercial activity is good, many factors for a quality society and urbanism will be guaranteed. Thus, retail will have an absolute impact on the urban space. If we guarantee retail, we guarantee the quality urban space. The roundtable ends with the intervention by the moderator who, again, relates proactive policies to values of the administration as a future tool, closely linked to the experiences highlighted by BCN Design Centre and endorsed by Mikael Colville’s data. Laura López argues that retail must evolve “from complaint to proposal” and that we must believe in its power of transformation while acknowledging the opportunities, as well as recovering the pride of retail as a key element of future cities.

Technology and commerce

Moderator: Enric Jové Speakers: Christian Rodríguez, Jaume Portell, Jaume Gomà

Enric Jové CEO of McCann WG Barcelona and CIO of McCann WG Espanya. Enric Jové is currently the CEO of McCann WG Barcelona and the CIO of McCann WG Spain, a post he has been working since 2009. In his professional career at McCann, a company he arrived in 2000, he was the head of the digitization of the agency in Spain and Portugal. He have worked in international or national digital projects for Nike, Barclays, Nespresso, FC Barcelona, Nestlé, Kia, Repsol, La Caixa, Wuaki TV, Let’s Bonus, Martini, Banco de Sabadell, LFP , Buitoni, Maggi, etc.

Christian Rodríguez Speaker at several European universities and consultant. Christian has a long entrepreneurial career in the Spanish and European scene. With an educational background in new trends, he stands out in the creation and management of other projects and startups since he was 18 years old. He is also a speaker at several prestigious European universities and a consultant in internationally consolidated companies.

Jaume Portell CEO and founder of Beabloo, expert in the information technology sector. Jaume Portell has more than 23 years of experience in the information technology sector (IT). For six years, he was Director of Technology in eDreams. He graduated in Computer Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and later took an MBA at ESADE (Barcelona) and was graduated in 2008. As a CEO and founder of Beabloo, he has focused on leading the expansion International of the company, its sustainable growth and strategic acquisitions, as well as promoting a continuous innovation, internationally recognized by companies like Goldman Sachs, IDC or Gartner.

Jaume Gomà CEO and cofounder of Ulabox. He began his professional career in the Internet and Telecommunications sector as Director of Business Development of Barcelona Online. He subsequently held different positions of responsibility in France Telecom and Orange Spain, and in 2008 he became director of Segundamano. At the beginning of 2011 he decided to join the founding team of Ulabox as CEO, to drive and accelerate the definitive exit to the market of this online supermarket.PDA at ESADE Business School, Gomà is Business Angel in various startups such as Uvinum or Offerum and is also a founder of Macnificos.

TECHNOLOGY, A PRESSING ISSUE Enric JovĂŠ

In Barcelona and Catalonia, like in other European cities and countries, retail is a living reality that helps define the urban form and the nature of society. For the city of Barcelona, understood as a sum of neighbourhoods with quality public spaces and as a polycentric city, retail is one of its main assets. It is difficult to find a street in the city that does not have a shop, not to mention the around forty municipal markets that open their stalls every day in the Catalan capital. Local shops and market stalls are an attribute of Barcelona and Catalan retail, a lively space full of shopping activity. The main contributions and conclusions of this roundtable deal with the improvement of these shops, the use of technology to improve their range of products and services and, in short, the shopping experience. Different elements of this roundtable will focus the debate: omnichannel retail; the value of experience in offline shopping; the need for identity in each shop; and the work to achieve added value that encourages customers to go to the shop not only for what they need but for the experience itself. With all these aspects, the experts share lessons from their different professional backgrounds. And, as a leading thread that we should not forget, it is necessary to promote the value of local retailers and their expertise, which many retail, financial and service chains try to imitate. Far from distrusting technology, through local retail we have to promote the personal, human and trust-based relationship with the customers that we treasure. So letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s explore the lessons of this roundtable: The speaker contextualises the debate.

experience.

While e-commerce 1.0 emphasised sales, e-commerce 2.0 focuses its activity on establishing relations. While in e-commerce 1.0 profits are the objective, in e-commerce 2.0 and in the short term sales are not the objective. And this leads to the need to use technology.

Young people aged between 13 and 18, who are fully involved in the use of technology, consider shopping as the most attractive activity because of the experience it provides. On the other hand, to continue with figures that reflect the context, 8 out of 10 online consumers visit physical shops before making their purchase.

Studies reveal that we annually make 301 visits to physical shops and that we spend more than 400 hours shopping in the same period. 59% of consumers value their experience as the main attraction when they buy in a shop. The commercial evolution has gradually emphasised service over product, until reaching the

It should also be noted how the progress of digitalisation in local retail reveals that if a shopâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activity is not in omnichannel retailing, it will lose 50% of its consumers by 2020. Technology modifies consumption habits and behaviours. For the CEO of McCan WG

Barcelona, the â&#x20AC;&#x153;I want it, I have itâ&#x20AC;? approach that has been imposed by Amazon has been definitive, so 88% of consumers want the item delivered in less than 24 hours after purchase. In global consumer studies, 33% of consumers buy online once a week; 69% at least once a month, and 50% will buy online during the next Black Friday. 73% of online purchases come from watching videos, and 42% from searches. Amazon, in any case, is the main competitor, in a kind of all-against-one. It has more than 310 million active customers and 353 million products in its shops. 91% of purchases from the e-commerce giant are ordered to be delivered within 24 hours. 55% of online customers look for the products they need or want on Amazon and in the US the company owned by Jeff Bezos accounts for 49% of e-commerce sales, of which 2% are purchases by voice. It is necessary to highlight the changes that are taking place in the economic and commercial world. In this regard and in the future, renting or the sharing economy will increase their dominance in transactions to the detriment of sales. And smart re-ordering will be another way to buy. On the other hand, with the service economy, someone makes the purchase for us. And there are already several sharing economy platforms where, with lower investment than in previous business models, they gain more profits, such as Airbnb in comparison to hotel chains such as Hilton, Hollywood audiovisual production compared to Netflix productions, or the commercial distribution of Wallapop in relation to the business model of El Corte InglĂŠs, for example.

Promote a business that a hundred people love, and not a business that likes 1,000,000 people. Brian Chesky

We live in a world of risk, we should feel comfortable failing. Jimmy Wales

Decide if you see what happens or you are part of what happens. Elon Musk

LET’S ADD TECHNOLOGY TO THE ESSENCE OF COMMERCE Christian Rodríguez

The expert is a member of the board of directors of Hawkers, a company that has revolutionised the sunglass sector by selling 2 million units online in the last five year, in direct sales based on product design, production in China and direct online sales to the customer. However, Hawkers later considered that it also needed to open physical shops to continue its growth. “We found that 60% of customers entering Hawkers’ new physical shops did not know that the company had been selling sunglasses online.” This and other data indicates that there are many values of offline sales that need to be exploited.

per-use in the hotel sector. There is no doubt that customers are undergoing a complete change and evolution of their values. New generations think, consume and value the world in a different way to their predecessors.

Technologies offer opportunities we cannot ignore. An online point of sale can be opened in one hour. The new generations of entrepreneurs can exploit this advantage. The speaker mentions how his father, a 72-year-old businessman, would not have been able to open a business so quickly. So this is a new economy in the fourth industrial revolution. A dizzying change that occurs in the middle of a VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) context.

We must bear in mind that there is a consumer lifecycle. Despite the new trends and the evolution of values, when new generations have greater purchasing power, as well as their online habits, they will enter the physical shop and buy a big car.

From 2012 to 2017, online companies became the most valued companies in the US. And many companies like Airbnb have understood the market and the needs and characteristics of consumers. The assets of these new business models are not owned by the services they sell. There is no investment in the asset. The speaker founded the company Byhours, which sells by hotel hours and introduces the notion of pay-

In mature markets, we must keep pace with evolution and small changes at the same time. The customer values the small changes that add value. It is always necessary to analyse why customers enter “my shop”. Thus, in order to have maximum footfall, for example, in the Hawkers physical shops cash is not accepted. Therefore, data is obtained from all consumers, and this is important for knowing where something was purchased, if the customer has purchased before, and their name. And at the same time, the peer-topeer value with the customer is captured thanks to the offline experience of physical shops.

In any case, business models based exclusively on price and offers are not sustainable.

New generations think, consume and value the world in a different way to their predecessors.

As for the different sales channels, Christian RodrĂguez emphasises the importance of having a single omnichannel retail strategy. We must, when appropriate, accept intermediaries and be able to distribute on other channels and take advantage of tools like the marketplace. Online and offline channels must coexist and have to allow data sharing. Thanks to this vision, we have learned that 50% of Hawkersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; customers already wear glasses. The revolution of the Hawkers business model has shown, according to the speaker, that the sunglass sector was not transparent enough. Apart from the higher cost of lenses, the consumer did not know that an important part of the final price paid was due to the optician service provided by the shop.

Business models based exclusively on price and offers are not sustainable.

Technology is therefore a fundamental axis of commerce and new business. But it is not the only solution. And we see this in the determination of the big successful e-commerce companies, like Amazon, to open physical shops. I invite you to grow with your local retail offer, exploiting your values, fully understanding your customers and why they buy, and clearly realising that the product we will have to sell in the future is not in our shop today.

SMART SHOPS AND THE WISDOM OF EXPERTISE Jaume Portell

Certainly, e-commerce has gained a share of business, especially over the last few years when we have experienced an intense economic crisis. In some countries, such as China, online sales have grown to 18% of total sales. And with commercial initiatives such as singles’ day, we can see the strength of e-commerce. However, in recent times there has been stagnation in the evolution of e-commerce sales. For the speaker, human beings do not want to buy everything for convenience. We value and enjoy our shopping experience because of the smells, lighting and interior decoration of physical shops. In fact, when we enter physical shops, our hunter brain is activated. The physical shop becomes, following this metaphor, an attractive forest. We smell, touch and listen to what it contains. This experience is unrepeatable in the online world, despite developments in augmented reality. We have already mentioned that the big players in e-commerce are opening physical shops. These actors seek contact with their customers, a public that understands the product and the brand. It must be clear that humans will never be robots. We are advanced mammals. The percentages of 20% of online sales and 80% of sales in physical shops are probably meaningful limits that we have to keep in mind. Studies by consultancy firms such as Goldman

Sachs report that there is a high percentage of convenience sales, of products we need, such as razors and deodorant. And yet, there is another possibility of retail-oriented machine learning that can focus on the ecosystem of shops of the future, a new field where we will analyse the data to create behaviour patterns to find out what customers we will have tomorrow and how much we will sell through the use of technology. Using the customer satisfaction index through, for example, facial expression. There are other technological elements that will contribute to future retail, such as: • Commercial use of robotics to provide an automated service to customers. • The use of CRM. • Smart shelves to adapt to price change. • Wireless connection. • Omnichannel retailing. • Business intelligence. In the case of companies such as Beabloo, technology is used to improve the experience and e-commerce. In physical shops there are many things happening: the people who go there, who look closely at some items and not so much at others; who look at some shelves and but not others. In short, if we collect and analyse this set of data, we can decide more accurately what to

do. The companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experience, according to Jaume Portell, allows sales to be increased by up to 17%. And the advertising efficiency in attracting more customers to the online channel has allowed sales to increase up to 350%. These are real cases in Spain. Once again we must be very aware that people want to go to shops to look, touch and have a valuable experience. The company Beabloo has designed software that is capable of monitoring the content of different screens and the reactions of the customers in their shopping experience. The visual aspect is important. And it can also analyse what customers want using their facial expressions at any time. It is about learning from what is happening inside the shop and monitoring the movement of people there and where they stop. All these movements and behaviours can be studied through Wi-Fi. With smart shelves, the screens installed provide specific information when a customer picks up a product. If the customer picks up another one at the same time, the software allows him or her to obtain comparative information about the two products. All of this is designed to optimise the shopping experience. The software learns and teaches the most appropriate content for the customer, also depending on the gender and time of day of the purchase. What the customer looks at helps us to sell more. We take into account, as vectors

People want to go to shops to look, touch and have a valuable experience.

of knowledge and improvement, omnichannel communication and sensorial experiences in shops. On the other hand, we must add that technology must work alone. We cannot assume that all retailers are knowledgeable about technology. These types of systems installed in shops must be autonomous. In any case, apart from enhancing local retail with technology, it has an incalculable value in itself. Both in terms of the employment it generates and the contribution it makes to the life of the neighbourhoods. Finally, this software provides new tools that help us compete more efficiently.

OPTIMAL DIGITAL SERVICE FOR FRESH FOOD David Campoy

Within the triad of each market, consumer profile and use of technology, food is a sector where the technological revolution is pending notable implementation. Certainly, distance selling was already done in the past: for example, before the invention of the domestic electric refrigerator the dairy travelled from the farm to the population centres to distribute milk at home. The pasteurisation of milk was a new milestone in this market that extended the shelf life of milk from three days to three months. The strengthening of urbanisation and the development of private vehicles brought to an end the dairy’s home distribution model. There are new social and technological changes that also affect the food sector, although in this field e-commerce will never become 100% of the commercial activity. In China and Korea, online sales of food products are close to 20%. In the United Kingdom, 7%; in France, 5%; and in Spain, the percentage ranges from 1.5% to 2%. Within these percentages, in the case of Spain, between 25 and 30% of online customers buy through this channel once a year, while in the United Kingdom this figure reaches 13 purchases a year. With the analysis of whether the cultural or environmental facet explains the difference between the percentage of consumers who purchase food products online, in the speaker’s opinion the degree of optimal adaptation of the online sales channel would explain these differences between countries.

Certainly, in Catalonia and Spain the percentage of fresh produce out of total food consumption is higher than in other countries. So the challenge would be greater. In our case, fresh produce represents up to 50% of total food purchases. Based on this context of analysis, the company Ulabox wanted to develop an innovative experience through the Municipal Institute of Markets of Barcelona (IMMB) with a pilot experience at El Ninot municipal market, in Barcelona’s Eixample district. The aim was to promote the local market and pay attention to the fact that many people buy fresh produce at the supermarket to avoid queues. Through the pilot test, we have determined that

We have to help customers to make the shopping process easier, and we also want them to discover products and functionalities.

between 47.5 and 50% of our customers repeat the purchase in the market through Ulabox. And they buy fresh produce once a week, in addition to the weekly supermarket shop. El Ninot Market retailers are gaining additional sales through Ulabox. We know this given that 99% of customers who buy online in El Ninot Market have a postal code different from its surrounding area. Retailers and their associations want incremental sales. It is true, in terms of purchasing habits, that many people buy on Saturday mornings in the municipal markets, and that the markets are a unique form of Barcelona and Catalan commerce. But, undoubtedly, everyone wants customers to go once, twice or three times a week, and through Ulabox they want them to buy remotely. When we refer to improving digital tools to become instruments used more often, this refers to the importance of customisation. The Ulabox website records the products that each customer normally acquires and reminds them if they have not ordered them at the time of purchase. The percentage of customers who end up adding products to their electronic shopping cart in this way is very high.

We must help customers to facilitate the shopping process, and we also want to help them discover products and functionalities and also show them the possibilities of technology.

We believe that we must help customers to facilitate the shopping process, and we also want to help them discover products and functionalities and also show them the possibilities of technology. The speaker is convinced that technology, plus fresh produce, plus personalisation, is essential. In the online world, the customer is the one who chooses and has the purchasing power; and the work of the Ulabox website is to serve and enhance this aspect.

The perfect shop

Moderator: Ferran Blanch Speakers: Alexis Mavrommatis, Xavier Mas i Muntsa Vilalta.

Ferran Blanch Professor of marketing strategy at ESADE and owner of the company VisionMarketing. Degree in Biology from the University of Barcelona and MBA from ESADE (1993). Founding member of VisionMarketing (2005), marketing outsourcing consultancy for SMEs from which he has led projects of strategic implementation in different sectors. He has completed a full marketing career in different multinational companies with executive positions (Marketing and Commercial) in Spain, Italy and France. During his career he has worked in sectors as diverse as consumption, luxury, real estate and tourism. He is a lecturer at ESADE and other prestigious universities in which he regularly teaches courses, seminars and “in-company” programs, Marketing strategy, International Marketing and brand. He teaches and collaborates in programs of Master, MBA, Executive and Programs In-Company at ESADE and in collaboration with other universities (Georgetown University (USA), SDA Bocconi (Milan - Italy), among others). Speaker and lecturer in business and sectoral forums.

Alexis Mavrommatis Director of EADA, Retail Management Center. Alexis Mavrommatis is an executive graduate from the University of Cambridge (Sustainable Leadership) and Harvard Business School. PhD and MSc in Retail Management from the University of Stirling, UK. Alexis has worked for the Carrefour group and as a senior consultant for JDV The Retail Company, developing innovative point-of-sale concepts for retailers and manufacturers (Carrefour, P & G, Coca-Cola, Masterfoods, Eroski). Alexis is Director of the EADA Retail Center Managment and teaches and researches in the areas of marketing, retailing, multichannel strategies, sustainability and entrepreneurship. He has participated in more than 70 academic and professional conferences, and in 2012 he obtained the 33rd position in the “Business Professor” ranking of the prestigious magazine “The Economist”. His last academic publication has been in the “European Journal of Marketing”, in relation to the decision making in the elimination of the product. He is a visiting professor at ITAM business school (Mexico) & Australian Center of Retail, Monash University (Australia).

Xavier Mas Chief Marketing Officer – CaixaBank. Xavier Mas holds a degree in Business Administration and a Master in Business Administration from ESADE Barcelona and also has completed his education at IESE Business School. He joined CaixaBank in 1998, having worked at Henkel for 5 years as Brand Manager, prior to that. At CaixaBank, Xavier has always worked in Marketing, starting as a Product Manager, taking the responsibility of Retail Marketing in 2006 and since 2012 is the Chief Marketing Officer, leading all marketing activities of CaixaBank. Moreover, Xavier has been involved in lots of marketing initiatives. Since 2011 is teaching Marketing at ESADE. Since 2011 he is member of the board of the Marketing Club of Barcelona. Last April he was nominated as member of the board of the Marketing Association of Spain. In addition, he is member of the CMO Advisory Council of 2 leading companies, IBM and Oracle.

Muntsa Vilalta General Director of Commerce and director of the Consortium of Commerce, Crafts and Fashion of Catalonia (CCAM). General Director of Commerce and director of the Consortium of Commerce, Crafts and Fashion of Catalonia (CCAM) developing the policies of Commerce in Catalonia. She has focused his career in the sector of business organizations and strategic and marketing consulting specializing in services and commerce companies. Likewise, she has also practiced permanently in the world of university teaching. Degree in Economic and Business Sciences (UB); PhD in Business Management and Organization (UPF) and a diploma in Marketing Services (ESADE) and Senior Management in Sales (IESE).

Barcelona and Catalonia, like other cities and countries in Europe, are places where local retail is a living reality that helps define the urban layout and the nature of society. Local retail in the city of Barcelona, understood as a sum of neighbourhoods with quality public spaces and as a polycentric metropolis, is one of the features that define its character. It is difficult to find a street in the city that does not have a minimum of commercial activity, not to mention the almost forty municipal markets that open their stalls in Barcelona every day. Local retail and market stalls are in themselves an attribute of Barcelona and Catalan retail, a living space of commercial activity and improvement. The roundtable, whose main contributions and conclusions we present here, explores the improvement of these shops, the use of technology to enhance their range of products and services and, in short, the shopping experience. Different elements of this roundtable will focus the debate, such as omnichannel, the value of the experience of offline shopping, each shop’s need for a narrative, and the work to achieve added value that encourages customers to go to the shop not only to look for what they need but for the experience itself; the value of going there. Experts will share lessons concerning these aspects, based on their different professional backgrounds. And as a cross-over element and leading thread, the value of retailers and their craft must be promoted, a craft that big commercial, financial and service chains try to imitate. Far from regarding technology with apprehension, we must promote values of local retail such as close relations with the customers and trust. Let us explore the lessons of this roundtable.

The last roundtable of the European Conference on Commerce and Tourism, moderated by Ferran Blanch, professor, entrepreneur and founder of VisionMarket, is based on the four ideas that drove the previous roundtable. • Technology has brought about a change and is here to stay. The local retail sector must adopt and have a good relationship with it. • Technology creates opportunities for offline commerce that we must be able to exploit. • Collaboration is a necessity. We need to learn things to work together. Learning to find partners and establish alliances with actors who have technological knowledge that can be useful for local retail. • These elements help us evolve, despite the presence of seemingly adverse factors.

Professor Blanch mentions, moreover, an article in The New York Times of 4 September 2018 written by Dr Kahn. This article points out how sales in American shopping centres had fallen by over 50% while stressing that sales lost by the big commercial chains, for the first time and in the last period, were recovered by American local retail, a sector that already experienced positive economic results. The author explains how the success of American retail made shopping easier for customers. From this starting point, the roundtable features lessons and points of view from Professor Alexis Mavrommatis, director of EADA, Centre de Retail Management; Xavier Mas, Chief Marketing Officer at CaixaBank; and Muntsa Vilalta, Director General of Commerce at the Government of Catalonia.

THE HUMAN TOUCH, THE HEART OF LOCAL RETAIL Alexis Mavrommatis

During his presentation, Alexis Mavrommatis argues that technology has the power to transform our business. It is clear that technology breaks down borders between the different economic sectors and is present everywhere. It also has the capacity to transform the customer’s expectations. Mavrommatis argues that the customer’s last best experience is the next experience expected. Professor Mavrommatis states that local retail can be the last best experience so that when customers want to buy on Amazon they cannot find the experience we have given them. In other words, we overestimate the impact of e-commerce technology and underestimate the capacity of local retail to adapt to it. The use of algorithms to determine behaviours and choices creates power. Mavrommatis asks: who actually controls the algorithms that govern social media or other platforms that have an effect on e-commerce? The real power is clarity, mainly in a world with too much information and data: “In a world of irrelevant information, clarity is the determining power.” In a forward-looking perspective, the professor mentions how in the last summit of the World Economic Forum held in the Swiss town of Davos, in an forecast of the state of retail and the economic reality by 2030, the trend of the transformation of major products into services

In a world inundated with irrelevant information, clarity is power. Yuval Noah Harari

Service is time well saved, while experience is time well spent. Joseph Pine, co-author of The Experience Economy

The last best experience is the next minimum expectation.

was highlighted. The companies will not own them. The customers, the individuals, will probably not – taking this possible evolution to the extreme – own the houses where they live or the cars they drive. In this framework, we must imagine what the future of retail will be. And the importance of the concept of collaboration will emerge. In this respect, many of the things we buy might be manufactured locally and by us with a 3D printer.

Technology and ICT are paramount, particularly among the young generations. They can barely imagine daily life without access to Wi-Fi. And the changes in values are quite profound. As an example, in Hillary Clinton’s last electoral campaign in the US, her youngest followers wanted to have a selfie with her. The idea of self celebration has become the protagonist of our era. Some commercial and leisure formulas point in the same direction. In the US, some places, such as the Museum of Ice Cream, are designed so that visitors can take selfies as the core of the experience. They are intuitive and easy

AUTO REALIZATION

SELF ESTEEM

experiences. These are some of the elements of today’s changing trends, to which retail must adapt to become competitive.

SOCIALS

The core of what we sell as local retail is not the SECURITY PHYSIOLOGICAL

product but the relations of trust, which become as important as the brands. Thus, customisation is considered key in local retail. The human touch is the unique feature we can provide in physical shops. Person-to-person contact, theatralisation and the service we provide become a variable with a great deal of value and the core of the transforming experience we have to offer.

“WHAT I WANT” AS A DRIVER OF THE LOCAL SHOP Xavier Mas

One of the basic approaches we took at CaixaBank for the refurbishment of our branches lies in the principle that consumers are motivated by two types of issues: what I have to do and what I want to do. In terms of commerce and services, we see that 80% of our actions are based on what we have to do during the day. We often use technology to buy what we need. Where we have more capacity to influence, as a retailer, is in what we want to do. The other sectors are more “commoditised”.

people but people who generate trust. There are big companies that are transforming a basic product or service into an experience, such as Nespresso with coffee capsules, and customised services.

If we focus on what we want, we enter the world of experience. In the case of banks it is clear that this sector is not very attractive. What we are transforming is the very idea of going to a bank. We want to transform it into an experience. To make this transformation we, as CaixaBank, have looked at what retailers do.

In the Store branches of CaixaBank the online services are transformed into a peer-to-peer conversation with the client, based on closeness. In a store space where the products are on display, events such as workshops or talks are available in a friendly and modern setting. Everything to provide an experience that encourages the customer to return.

In fact, big companies such as Apple are opening stores in the best locations in the city centres in the world. (During the Conference we saw that “there is a return to the local, both by global brands and tourists who want to live like residents, etc.”) In fact, we do not just buy a product. What is truly relevant is the added value that you give it and the experience of the product when shopping. We have realised that it is not about having sales

In this environment it is not possible to have a shop that offers little value and focuses on serving people in terms of “what I have to do”. If we do so, we run the risk of technology applied to commerce extinguishing our business model.

Moreover, we believe that the retail sector must use the ICT within its reach. For instance, with the social media it is possible to enhance the profile of local business. It is also a way of getting closer to younger groups. And we should bear in mind that the under-30s search for information on their smartphones; for the youngest the mobileonly approach accounts for almost 100% of the experience.

CATALONIA, A COUNTRY OF COMMITTED AND ATTRACTIVE COMMERCE Muntsa Vilalta

Catalonia is a country with 103,000 shops; in other words, it is clearly a country of commerce. The sector provides work for 500,000 people in Catalonia and accounts for 16% of GNP. The commercial density – defined as the total number of shops per every one thousand inhabitants – is 13.66 shops per every one thousand inhabitants and is above the Spanish average, thereby constituting a notable commercial offer.

establish themselves in the city centres. Big stores can mean an outsourcing that also clones the commercial offer. And this, in a context of significant rent increases in the main urban centres and stagnated salaries. In this scenario, we need to add the rise in tourism: in the case of Barcelona, with 20 million tourists annually. In short, and from the point of view of residents, we need to recover consumer confidence.

In relation to the commercial density of the large commercial formats, which is defined by the average surface area of shopping centres per one thousand inhabitants, in terms of large distribution, Catalonia has an average surface area of 207 m2/1,000 inhabitants, while in the rest of Spain it is 340 m2/1,000 inhabitants. And, as an example, in France the density is higher than 400 m2/1,000 inhabitants.

Another challenge faced by local retail and that we are dealing with in this European Conference on Commerce and Tourism is digitalisation. Some data stresses this issue, such as 1.5% share of e-commerce in food retail in Catalonia, which contrasts with 5-6% in the same sector in other countries in our environment.

92% of shops in Catalonia are located in compact cities and have a small average surface area of 65 m2. We know that the surface area is proportionately related to the shop’s turnover. In this respect, it is very important to increase the experience and trust provided by local retail. Proximity is increasingly more valued. Thus, big stores and commercial chains want to

From the online point of view, the value of proximity is increasingly higher. Data from the search engine Google reveals that the searches with the keyword “nearby” are increasing. And in terms of the consumer behaviour in showrooming, by visiting and getting information about the products and services in the physical shop to later buy online and in webrooming, or consultation on the online space to later buy from the physical shop, he notes that visits to shops to later buy

online are decreasing and online consultation to then buy in the physical shop increasing. Moreover, the director general encourages assessment of the digital health of each business based on the online diagnosis and self-evaluation tool provided by the Government of Catalonia: http://autodiagnosi.ccam.cat/ At another level, in the next few years other technology fields such as artificial intelligence or robotics will enable new advances. In any case, technology helps retail to correct errors and overcome barriers and places us in omnichannel. In this respect, it is worth noting that we must have a single commercial concept for our customer, whether online or offline. We have the opportunity to democratise the use of technology for all local retail in a context in which the consumer is more demanding and dealing with a more complex shopping process. The shopping processes have transformed and become widespread. For instance, in a fashion shop, a consumer can order a product online, go to the physical shop, find another piece of clothing and order it in situ, and later share on their social media their satisfaction with finding this item of clothing. Nevertheless, it is worth stressing the value of the experience in the physical shop, in the street. Big stores want to reach the city, its centre, and look to the value of the experience and link with people. As an example, the Swedish company IKEA had planned a major investment in a big distribution centre but, in the end, replaced it with a shop in the centre of Tarragona.

We must head towards open city centres, full of shops with experience. They must be spaces of life and sustainable, competitive and balanced retail with a professional commercial dynamic. The Act on Commerce, Fairs and Markets approved by the Parliament of Catalonia in August 2017 seeks to develop the tools of Areas of Urban Economic Promotion (APEUs, in Catalan) to achieve the objectives described. The aim is that, in 2019, this act will be fully operative, which must adapt our reality to the Anglo-Saxon model of BIDs. Shops form part of the city. Shops that, in relation to the title of the roundtable, are imperfect, and this is why they are attractive and beautiful, like people. We need to adapt shops to their territory and place the individual at the centre. In terms of the relation between territory and shop, we should be clear that the territory provides value to the shop. There are different factors, by way of summary, to promote the physical shop: • Singularitat. • Engagement (vincle amb el territori). • Relacions de confiança. • Valors. L’activisme per transformar la societat des de la botiga. • Experiència de la botiga física. We need each shop to have an underlying project, for there to be continuity in the project and also in the space where it is located, and we need flexibility to gradually adapt it. Some authors,

such as Sílvia Bach, have reminded us that: Either we are heading towards convenience, to the shopping we need and we have everything close at hand or we are heading towards ranges of products and services based on experience, values, on what they bring us. Based on this approach, the director general wonders what the administration and government can do, and calls for the following: • Inform retailers and their associations and provide them with data knowledge. • Arrange and provide the normative regulation, such as by strengthening of the APEUs Act. • Support companies competitiveness.

improve

Showrooming 2014: 18% | 2017: 11% | -7%

Webrooming 2014: 32% | 2017: 46% | +14%

We have to adapt shops to their territory and put the individual at the centre of the shop. Sílvia Bach

• Lend prestige to retail as a social activity so that it becomes a valued sector. In conclusion, the roundtable’s moderator, Ferran Blanch, advocates the need to go beyond the idea that the perfect shop is the one that makes more sales. We have to evolve towards a new conception of the term in which the perfect shop is the one that the consumer recognises, remembers, prefers and talks about. A shop that offers an added value to its customers and that often is not linked to the product or service it sells, but rather, to how it sells it. This shop must see technology as an intrinsic part of the relation with its customers that will enable it to create a relationship that goes beyond the current one, in which retailers know their customers and their tastes better than they do. This shop generates much of the added value it offers in human treatment, goes beyond its physical location, is available in different formats and can be accessed from anywhere.

We have to go beyond the idea that the perfect shop is the one that sells more; we must evolve to a new concept of the term in which the perfect shop is the one that consumers recognise, remember, prefer and talk about. A shop that offers an added value to its customers and that often is not linked to the product it sells or the service offered but to how they sell. This shop must understand technology as an intrinsic part of the relationship with customers that will enable it to go further and to understand them and their tastes better than they do. A shop that generates most of the added value it offers through personal service. A shop that goes beyond its physical location, adopts different formats and can be accessed from anywhere. Ferran Blanch

BARCELONA COMERÇ Main objectives The mission and purposes of Barcelona Comerç are: • Promotion of all kinds of projects and activities aimed at encouraging the full development of local retail at a social, economic and cultural level. • Support for all those initiatives that, having emerged from the Eixos Comercials de Barcelona, require a momentum to be implemented in optimal conditions. • Support for those initiatives that, despite being promoted by other groups or associations, coincide with the mission and purposes of Barcelona Comerç. • It is, in general, a broad mission and purposes, open to provide support and encompass the work of other foundations, organisations and agents with which Barcelona Comerç shares aims.

Overall objectives • Promote as intensively as possible the idea of the need to work to maintain and enlarge the spirit of a city in which leisure, culture, tourism and commerce are inseparable. • Promote debates and studies on commercial urbanism, as one of the most important tools for the socio-urban development of cities. • Foster campaigns to encourage professional and business vocations in the world of commerce. • Open committed debates on issues related to mobility: interior (how to reach the shopping areas?) and exterior (do you have to leave the

city to go shopping?) • Promote a better level of relations in order to improve understanding between retail and its human environment. • Enhance knowledge of the characteristics of the neighbourhoods that make up the surroundings of the shopping areas. • Promote the creation of a new concept around the Urban Areas of Economic Promotion (APEUs) that, in the image of the Anglo-Saxon and Canadian BIDs, enable the constitution of development and management companies of lucrative urban economic areas, based on the economic and relational strength of urban retail. • Promote a collective European space of urban retail that enables reflection and ongoing exchange of experiences and participation in the necessary promotion of this retail in community organisations. • As a result of this concern, Barcelona has helped create, along with representative organisations from France, Italy and Portugal, a European association, Vitrines d’Europe, which takes these concerns to promote local retail to a European level and tries, through meetings, conferences and congresses, to lay the foundations for the need to preserve and, if appropriate, recover the European city as the basis of our society: a compact, welcoming city that is the core of all activities: a social space to live, work, shop and improve socially and culturally. The headquarters of Vitrines d’Europe is in Barcelona and Barcelona Comerç holds its secretariat.

THANKS Albert Torras Alfons Barti Amparo Madrid Esco Gallego Eduard Falip Esther Ruiz Jordi Folck Josep Xurigué Maria Sabaté Susana Cuadras

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