The Diplomat
The Group of World Heritage Cities of Spain has participated in a professional conference in Dehli, Bangalore and Mumbai to promote its tourism, heritage, cultural and gastronomic offer in the Indian market.
The professional conferences to support marketing in the Indian market, entitled The Spanish Travel Experience. India 2023, were organized by Turespaña and took place between the fourth and sixth of October, according to the City Council of Merida and the Spain-India Council Foundation.
The inaugural ceremony in Delhi was attended by the Spanish Ambassador to India, José María Ridao, and the Spanish Minister of Tourism in India, Elisa Robles. The aim of the conference was to support the knowledge and marketing of Spanish destinations, their products and tourism services, with the participation of tourism companies and organizations. The Group had a specific space for professional meetings, attended by the Group’s tourism technician, Patricia Hernández.
In each city, meetings were held with agents and tour operators from the Indian market, previously selected by the Spanish Tourism Office in Mumbai, with an average of 150 professionals from the Indian tourism sector in each of the meetings in the three cities, where the main demand for luxury products and services in Spain is located.
The Group of World Heritage Cities of Spain is a non-profit association, created in 1993, just 30 years ago, for the cultural and tourist promotion of the heritage of the 15 cities that make it up, whose historic centers have been recognized by UNESCO as World Heritage: Alcalá de Henares, Ávila, Baeza, Cáceres, Córdoba, Cuenca, Ibiza/Eivissa, Mérida, Salamanca, San Cristóbal de la Laguna, Santiago de Compostela, Segovia, Tarragona, Toledo and Úbeda.
“The balance is very positive, because Spain is one of the preferred destinations for tourists from India, a strategic market on the rise, and that is why we encourage them to discover our 15 cities, the best symbol of the cultural richness of our country,” said the Group’s president and mayor of La Laguna, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez.
With more than 220,000 travelers in 2019, tourists from India is Spain had an expenditure of 584 million euros. According to Yeray, “these are tourists who return time after time, to discover all the variety that our country has to offer.” Indian tourists value quality tourism products and novel or unconventional experiences, related to art and culture, gastronomy, urban tourism and shopping, among others.
The president also explained that the presence at these conferences is part of “the Group’s powerful international promotion campaign throughout the Asian market, in collaboration with Turespaña”. “We are in a key year in the tourism promotion of the Heritage Cities”, added Yerai, who said that “technical and institutional presentations are also planned in Chicago and Toronto”, in addition to those recently held in Milan and those planned in Brussels, Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Oporto and in “the Nordic countries, specifically Stockholm and Copenhagen”.
