As major cities struggle to tackle the challenges of mass tourism, mayors from around the world gathered in Lisbon and adopted a first of its kind declaration to ensure the growing sector is beneficial for visitors and locals alike.
Mayors and vice mayors from 16 cities, including Lisbon, Barcelona, Paris, Sao Paulo and Seoul on Friday pledged to put sustainability at the core of the tourism industry by using new technologies to build “cities for all.”
The declaration comes at a time that low-cost airlines have created tourism booms in many leading cities, but at the same time prompting outcries from locals who have been pushed out because of surging house prices due to short-term rentals.
“We truly believe innovation can lead to many solutions to problematic issues in urban tourism development,” said Zurab Pololikashvili, secretary general of the World Tourism Organization.
The declaration highlighted the contribution of tourism to cities’ economies, but it also acknowledged some of the challenges, including pressure on infrastructure, relationships between visitors and locals, and fair working conditions.
“Lisbon needs to have a strong economy and tourism is part of that, but we also need quality of life, public services adapted to a growing number of visitors and we need a city where there is access to fundamental rights, including housing,” Lisbon Mayor Fernando Medina told reporters.
Locals say they are being pushed out of their city as private developers transform houses into Airbnb properties, hotels and luxury flats.
Airbnb Inc faces legal battles in several countries, while Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Tel Aviv and Dublin have all either announced or adopted measures to regulate temporary rentals through Airbnb.
Airbnb and other private companies were at the discussions, the World Tourism Organization said.
Medina said that there was a link between housing costs and tourism, and property renting platforms put some pressure on cities.
The Lisbon City Council, alongside the Portuguese government, was working on regulations to control the phenomenon, which especially affects historical areas, he said.
“We don’t want to lose the diversity of our historical neighborhoods,” he said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to