Barcelona will invest 12 million in a tourism promotion plan focused on culture

Barcelona prepares to reactivate its main economic engine in a post-pandemic scenario. The public consortium Turisme de Barcelona has approved a new city promotion plan that contemplates an investment of 12 million euros in two years. The objective of Turisme de Barcelona in this new stage is to focus on culture, that is, on attracting visitors who want to enjoy the city's facilities and cultural production, its design and architecture, literary Barcelona or cinematic Barcelona.

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The challenge is to promote the arrival of higher value-added tourism that spends more at the destination and is more sustainable and respectful of the city. In this sense, to place culture as the main axis of attractions, Turisme de Barcelona plans to encourage the celebration of major events that put the Catalan capital on the world map of culture.

"It is about highlighting those features that differentiate us, and culture, creativity, and innovation have always been inherent characteristic elements of the city of Barcelona. We must recover that spirit," explains the consortium's director, Marian Muro.

Turisme de Barcelona's action plan aims to be more selective when defining the foreign markets where to seek tourists to ensure they are "value clients who leave money in the city." The marketing strategy will also be redefined to better define the narrative or attributes that are to be projected. "It's about us being able to control the narrative, defining how we want to be recognized in the world, going after the client we are interested in," Muro argues.

Once freedom of movement can be recovered and the current restrictive measures to control the pandemic are reduced, Turisme de Barcelona's objective is to increase visitors from the rest of Spain by 15%, "who have been lost year after year and who interest us due to their proximity." Thus, a specific plan is to be activated to attract national visitors interested in culture, gastronomy, and maritime Barcelona.

The promotional focus will also be placed on the European market, but "Barcelona's big bet --- highlights the consortium --- must be on the Southeast Asian and American markets." "Southeast Asia is expected to be the great market of the 21st century and Barcelona must be prepared to have a leadership position within three or four years," emphasizes the institution chaired by Eduard Torres.

Turisme de Barcelona's new 2021-2022 plan also foresees promoting co-marketing and a policy of alliances between companies to intensify promotional action. For this fiscal year, the consortium has approved a budget of 20.6 million euros.