PANTHOS – Inclusive Leisure Sports in Natural Spaces
CONTEXT
PANTHOS was born in Extremadura in 2016 as the collective effort of a multidisciplinary team of professionals from different sectors – experts in navigation experts, sports technicians, environmental guides or night sky guides – with a common goal: to create an inclusive and adaptable leisure and sports tourism offer for everyone, taking advantage of the excellent natural aquatic resources of the region, and open to collaboration with other local and/or regional actors to guarantee the quality and accessibility of its offer.
DESCRIPTION
Now recognised as a benchmark company for water activities and the first nautical school in Extremadura thanks to a triple commitment by its internal team to constant innovation, respect for the natural environment and the inclusiveness of its range of sports and leisure activities, PANTHOS arose from the business need observed by the founders to take advantage of the aquatic resources of the region (reservoirs, lakes and rivers) to create a tourist offer in the North of Extremadura that makes a wide variety of products/services available to locals and visitors.
Furthermore, in order to enable its offer of experiences to meet the needs and expectations of potential customers, and with the idea of generating a resilient network of partners in the tourism and hospitality sector in Extremadura, PANTHOS collaborates with a variety of partners with whom to co-ideate and co-create new products, such as an aquatic offer of astro-tourism or experiences that combine the sporting experience and the gastronomic enjoyment of local products and cuisine. Likewise, they try to combine and integrate nature tourism and multi-adventure tourism into their offer, which is why their collaboration model is really inspiring and has allowed them to generate some of their most popular routes!
In addition, PANTHOS also collaborates with different public administrations for the organisation of events and offers its consultancy services in response to the exploitation of the blue economy and water sports/leisure. In this way, the company seeks to generate a positive impact on its ecosystem.
However, the most interesting thing about this company, whose headquarters are located in Lake Gabriel y Galán (Cáceres), is that all of its materials and services are adaptable to the needs and circumstances of its clients.
Another of the strengths of this company dedicated to exploiting the resources of Extremadura’s blue economy is its meticulous digital presence (website and blog) and on social networks, with corporate profiles on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, where they share the latest news about the company, some of the experiences they carry out with their collaborators or clients, etc., demonstrating a good online presence and digital marketing, positioning themselves where future new clients are: on the internet. In this sense, the professional use of its Facebook profile to create a community can be highlighted. In addition, also a newsletter used to share news with clients, members of its network and all those interested in keeping up to date with future experiences organised by PHANTOS and its collaborators throughout Extremadura.
Due to this set of cases, PANTHOS is considered a relevant case study for the purposes of BLUE-C, which seeks to provide inspiration and tools to professionals in the blue economy and tourism sector for the creation of more resilient and innovative collaborative communities in the current environment.
WHAT’S THE IMPACT?
The main impacts of PANTHOS’ activity can be categorised around three central axes. Firstly, the co-creation and continuous updating of an inclusive sport and leisure offer for all its potentials (clients), generates a positive social impact on the community and on more vulnerable or disabled groups, who can access fully adapted activities. Likewise, through the opportunity to co-create ad hoc experiences for specific groups or clients (e.g. companies), PANTHOS is configured as an opportunity for everyone to enjoy the natural environment of Extremadura.
In this sense, to reaffirm its commitment to respect for the environment and sustainability, the PANTHOS team takes great care to ensure that its intrusion into nature is as minimal as possible when developing its activities, so that it proposes sustainable and respectful routes. Likewise, all the cleaning products used by the company are biodegradable and do not include polluting components.
As for the economic-social impact, they assure that, through co-creation with other companies, PANTHOS can broaden the area of interest of its clients (which occurs, for example, thanks to the route that allows them to discover the abandoned village of Granadilla, declared a historic-artistic site in 1980) and, therefore, discover new places in the region or activities to do, which generates a positive impact on the rest of the territory. In this way, sectors such as the hotel and catering industry and small businesses benefit directly.
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