The Diplomat in Spain

Photo: AR

Alberto Rubio. 10/10/2018

Increase the quality of visitors should be the objective of the Spanish tourism sector, according to the people in charge of the Summit Shopping Tourism & Economy, who presented their fourth edition in Madrid yesterday.

Under the title “Issuing countries, competition between destinations and smart promotion”, the Summit’18 will analyze, next November 19 and 20 in Madrid, what are the keys for an improvement of the positioning of Spain in the field of Quality Tourism and Shopping According to the president of The Shopping & Quality Tourism Institute, Jordi Hereu, “it is necessary to implement a change in the tourist model” that should seek quality over the number of visitors.

“How should Spain be promoted in the world? To which market segments should we prioritize? From what strategy can we build together?”, Hereu described, for whom all this should lead to “improving environmental, social profitability” and economic, capturing a quality tourist that provides greater benefit “.

Chinese tourism is, in this aspect, one of the objectives proposed by the Summit leaders. Currently “only seven percent of Chinese tourists who come to Europe (almost 14 million) sleep in Spain”, while 31% do so in the United Kingdom, 18% in Italy, 13% in France and the 10% in Germany.

Therefore, he considered it necessary to “look for new horizons”, since in addition the current situation, with the recovery of some traditional destinations after the crisis, “gives us some warnings about the exhaustion of our model”.

In the presentation, in addition to Hereu and Isabel Atkinson, representatives of the companies that support this congress participated, such as CaixaBank, El Corte Inglés, Iberia, Samsung, Renfe, Global Blue, Mastercard, Abertis and Aena.