Uniting 26 municipalities, La Selva is a region of diversity, in which high density and high volume tourism of the Costa Brava are contrasted areas of great natural beauty, such as the Guilleries are left to explore. Over the past ten years, passenger numbers at La Selva’s Girona airport have grown ten-fold, providing an important international traffic hub north of Barcelona.

At the same time, La Selva is also home to an important food cluster spanning from the new innovation and interpretation centres for food and gastronomy, internationally recognised producers of fine meat products, culinary excellent and an agglomeration of important spring water companies such as Font Vella, Vichy Catalan, and Malavella and a rich resource of spa resorts.

La Selva faces the challenge of making these disperse, yet rich, resources available to visitors that often stay around the traditional tourist hotspots such as Lloret del Mar, or commute directly between airports and cities. Further, regional tourists and day-visitors have little knowledge of the rich resources and how to access them. At the same time, the expertise in research and innovation in new culinary and food products and concepts, international brand management.

La Selva has experimented with using ICT to enable new mobile tourist guides (e-routes) and is now looking to extend this programme to create more holistic service offerings for visitors to La Selva but also consumers of La Selva abroad to make the region’s resources more accessible and unique. Solutions that can help build La Selva into an integrated destination for visitors, can integrate the rich natural and gastronomic resources into new products and services are sought to address the challenges is this rural / coastal region.

Category Winners will be invited to La Selva, and in addition to the support in piloting and evaluating the winning solution the full support of the innovation and interpretation centres can be made available, including workspace and accommodation.