Spending a night in a hotel and relaxing in the spa, shopping at La Roca Village, enjoying dishes from Mussol, Txapela or Tapa Tapa, going to the Teatre Poliorama or the Museu de la Xocolata, discovering Gaudí's work, taking a trip to Montserrat or Girona... These are some of the experiences that Turisme de Barcelona has included in its Black Friday campaign, with discounts of up to 50% and valid until October 2021. The initiative aims to support the city's tourism and cultural sector, especially affected by the covid-19 crisis.
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This context has convinced Turisme de Barcelona to participate for the first time in Black Friday, with a great offer in culture, commerce, hotels and restaurants that should serve to reactivate activity in the city. "We wanted to give a breath of positivity to the consumer by launching a campaign in defense of small pleasures and small compensations, taking advantage of the commercial window of Black Friday," explains the director of the Leisure Tourism area at Turisme de Barcelona, Mercedes Garcia.
The Barcelona Black Friday campaign is designed for a local, national and proximity audience, offering different proposals "to enjoy the Barcelona that one likes the most, the sybaritic, the bohemian, the active, the cultural...", explains García. A total of 150 offers that can be purchased from this Friday until next Monday through the campaign's website. There are also proposals to leave Barcelona and go to the Pre-Pyrenees or Penedès, with the collaboration of the Diputación de Barcelona.
Specifically, the discounts consist of 2x1 on tickets to cultural facilities and leisure activities; 30% on hotels and tourist apartments; 20% on restaurants and 30% on shops and businesses. Additionally, the campaign includes Vueling tickets with a 25% discount on all national and international routes of the airline with Barcelona as origin and destination. "Experiences of all kinds inside and outside Barcelona to captivate this consumer who is looking for a small escape or wants to allow themselves a proximity getaway," summarizes Garcia.
For the representative of Turisme de Barcelona, promotion campaigns like this one must serve to help tourism, an industry that contributes 15% of GDP and represents thousands of jobs. "It is time to think big, make aid plans designed for the sector and coordinate strategies to reactivate tourist activity so that it is at full capacity in the medium and long term. The vaccine will largely dictate the timing, but we have to be prepared and work in advance," she defends. To do so, she assures that more public-private collaboration and coordination between different countries and destinations will be needed: "We have to roll up our sleeves."
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MARRIOTT SUPPORTS THE RESTAURANT SECTOR
Another initiative that aims to support the tourism sector, and especially restaurants, is the one that the hotel chain Marriott International has decided to promote. Its hotels in Barcelona, the W Barcelona and the Hotel Arts, will discount from their guests' bills the cost of a meal at any restaurant in Barcelona, for a maximum value of 100 euros per room and two people. The promotion is available from this Thursday until December 10 and the meal must be taken during the stay at the hotels.
The objective of this initiative is to stimulate the consumption of its clients in the city's bars and restaurants and contribute to reducing the impact of their latest closure. The directors of Hotel Arts and W Barcelona, Raúl Salcido and Stijn Oyen, argue that belonging to the hotel sector, also affected by the pandemic, had a lot to do with their decision to launch this initiative. They hope that it will have a positive impact on the turnover of restaurant businesses, "one of the fundamental pillars of the economy and leisure of the Catalan capital."