Angelats Hotel and UAB connect tourism, technology and nature.

Angelats Hotel and the Autonomous University of Barcelona have completed the ‘Millennial Angelats Smart Forest’ project, a multidisciplinary initiative to create new responsible tourism experiences in the natural environment of the Ripollès region. The collaboration integrates environmental research, landscape interpretation, open education, playful learning, sustainability and digital technologies to generate new ways of discovering and experiencing the natural environment.

The result is an immersive proposal that allows you to discover the woodland of the Angelats estate from two complementary perspectives. On the one hand, an interactive map offers the opportunity to explore the forest from a computer, without leaving the hotel, through digital resources that guide the user in discovering the biodiversity of the surroundings. On the other hand, there are hiking routes through the forest that extend this experience via mobile devices, augmented reality and QR codes placed along the trails.

The routes invite visitors to approach some of the estate's most outstanding natural features, such as the monumental oak, the waterfall and other points of ecological, scenic and heritage interest. The proposal is based on preliminary work identifying paths, natural resources, flora, native fauna and landscape features, with the aim of turning the route into a rigorous, accessible interpretive experience connected to the land.

The project also incorporates an eco-passport, a gamification tool that recognises guests' involvement in sustainable actions during their stay. Among the proposed gestures are reusing towels, reducing daily room cleaning, switching off lights, choosing local produce, avoiding food waste, taking one of the interactive forest trails and acting as a ‘forest guardian’ by respecting the environment or picking up litter. Upon completing four, five or seven gestures, participants can access rewards linked to the hotel experience.

This initiative has been developed over the course of a year with European funding through the Cross-Re-Tour Angelats Hotel: Green and Digital Transition programme. The work has been coordinated by the UAB Research Park and has involved researchers from the UAB. Paloma Valdivia, Professor in the Department of Theories of Education and Social Pedagogy, contributed to the technological design of the solution; Mariona Ferrandiz, researcher at CREAF and Associate Professor in the Department of Plant Biology, Animal Biology and Ecology, was involved in biodiversity monitoring and in the preparation of outreach materials on this topic; and Francesc Romagosa, from the Department of Geography, in the geographical dissemination and the adaptation of the project to sustainable tourism criteria.