Barcelona focuses on culture to attract higher quality tourism

Does Barcelona need tourist promotion, when the city is already full of tourists, cruise passengers, and convention attendees? Turisme de Barcelona has focused its action plan for the coming year based on this question, and on an answer it already has: "Barcelona no longer needs to attract more tourists, but rather to attract better tourists," guaranteed the general director of Turisme de Barcelona, Mateu Hernández.

With this objective, the city's tourism promotion consortium has rethought its strategy to focus on attracting higher-quality tourists, who generate more income and create a more positive impact in Barcelona. And in this, "the commitment to highlight culture as the hook to attract the best tourists" stands out, in an initiative from which the Barcelona Art Season seal has emerged.

As a new brand to position Barcelona's art scene internationally, the Barcelona Art Season stems from an alliance with the city's museums and exhibition centers, to promote it as a cultural destination. This alliance was confirmed at the event, held at La Pedrera and attended by representatives of prominent cultural actors in the city, from museums to musical institutions.

"The goal is to create an alliance between tourism and the art and culture sector, and to make Barcelona even more known as a city of culture," highlighted Hernández: "They will come for events like major exhibitions, but then they will discover everything the city has to offer."

To act as a tourist draw, the project identifies the exhibitions with the most potential to attract visitors. Currently, tourists are already regular visitors to Barcelona's museums and exhibition halls, as 68% of those who visit them are foreigners. With this new brand, the aim is to go further and decisively position the city in the international exhibition circuit. The strategy will include packages such as cultural passes and thematic itineraries, and will take Turisme de Barcelona to ARCO for the first time, which implies "a whole declaration of intent."

Barcelona Arts Season is inspired by the Barcelona Obertura initiative, promoted by Barcelona Global and conceived to attract music lovers to classical music with Barcelona as its stage, hand in hand with the Liceu, L'Auditori, and the Palau de la Música. Within the framework of this commitment to culture, Turisme de Barcelona will coordinate this platform, with the aim of jointly promoting the city as a benchmark for classical music. In addition, in the coming months, the initiative will be extended to the entire musical spectrum of the city, including festivals of all disciplines. "Come for the music and stay for the rest," Hernández highlighted, paraphrasing the motto of Barcelona Obertura.

Attracting congresses to attract investment

In addition to focusing on culture, Turisme de Barcelona has redesigned its strategy in the field of congresses and conventions: it will prioritize those that are associated with the city's investment strategy, as explained by the director of the Barcelona Convention Bureau, Christoph Tessmar. In addition, the organization will develop a legacy program, to ensure that congresses leave their mark on Barcelona.

"In many congresses, people come, consume the congress, consume the city, and leave, but we want them to generate an impact and a legacy," Tessmar defended. Thus, work will be done with the organization of certain events so that they transcend the boundaries of the congress and reach the fabric of Barcelona, either through training in the case of medical meetings or with technological initiatives such as those linked to the Mobile World Congress.

In addition, the consortium also aims to improve the visitor experience, including that of congress attendees, with proposals such as the MWC Barcelona Card initiative, an exclusive card for congress delegates. With access to 25 museums and five cultural spaces, it will be offered for the first time in this year's edition of the Mobile, and will be extended to the rest of the major fairs hosted by the city.

Cards with Barcelona experiences will also be extended to another group: cruise passengers. "We want cruises that start and end in Barcelona, and cruise passengers who come from afar, who bring us intercontinental flights, who bring wealth to the city," Hernández highlighted. And it is that, if 500,000 Americans travel to Barcelona to board a cruise, they cement direct air routes between the city and the United States, he exemplified. In fact, American tourists "are the ones who spend the most on culture, restaurants, and shopping; they are the type of tourist we want."

This is Barcelona

And to attract that higher quality tourist, the one who leaves more income in the city and the one who is attracted by Barcelona's differential proposal, the city has decided to assert itself. In this line of moving from attracting tourists in general to seeking a more specific quality segment, Turisme de Barcelona changed its claim from Visit Barcelona to a forceful This is Barcelona in the summer.

"The This is Barcelona reaffirms what we are, and it is a management of the city's image outwards, thinking about what can attract quality tourism," remarked the new Marketing Director of Turisme de Barcelona, Monica Martorell. This reaffirmation will be done hand in hand with the entire sector, which will work to articulate itself, as highlighted by the also new Director of Alliances and Strategy of the consortium, Anna Marquès.

Thus, the consortium refocuses its strategy towards the future with the sector, going beyond tourism and with culture as an ally, in a debate "that is no longer just about attracting tourists," as pointed out by the Deputy Mayor for Economy, Jordi Valls. "It is a debate that challenges us all," and which the sector wants to address by betting on a higher quality visitor who positively impacts the city.