News: The municipality of Lloret de Mar will follow tourists via the smartphone

Starting this summer, foreign tourists coming to the Catalan resort on the Costa Brava will be followed by the municipality and analyzed for their movements in the tourist resort.

Now that the roaming costs have been drastically reduced or no longer exist, many foreigners use their data bundle to surf the internet during the holidays.

The managers of the masts in Spain, and especially in the tourist areas, have millions of data about the activities of foreign tourists in seaside resorts. Since the municipality of Lloret de Mar wants to know what and where the foreign visitors find themselves during their stay, they have entered into a partnership with telecom supplier Orange.

Orange is the third largest telecom provider in Spain (behind Movistar and Vodafone) and, in terms of collecting and analyzing the stored data, works together with Mabrian Technologies, a specialist company in data analysis.

Since the roaming costs have been reduced or no longer exist among telephone users within the European Union, the use of mobile telephony has increased considerably in tourist areas in Spain. Every day 4 million data is sent and received by the broadcast masts, which is valuable data for many companies and institutions.

The municipality of Lloret de Mar wants information via the smartphone about where the visitors come from and where they are located in the seaside resort. This information can then be used to compare years with each other and to find out where most people are in the tourist place. All that with the privacy of the smartphone users.

According to Orange, tourists use their smartphone on average 100 to 150 times a day during their holiday in Spain. Orange says it only uses the data that the company receives in connection with the transmission masts and not in terms of the GPS on the smartphones.

Many beach resorts in Spain do the same with the free WIFI connections offered on the beaches. If foreigners use it, they can collect data and even send the tourists messages.