Spain Boosts Online Tourism
May 23rd, 2011
The Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade has allocated €8 million to promote its Web presence and boost tourism, using the latest technology, which includes a new channel on YouTube and an iPad application.
The budget for the ‘online’ strategy, which aims to support the promotional campaign ‘I need Spain’, covers any promotional campaigns on the Internet and the creation of a new strategy to be launched in mid-June.
During the presentation, the general secretary of Tourism and Domestic Trade, Joan Mesquida, highlighted the launch of a Spanish ‘Brand Channel’ on YouTube, an initiative that allows users to view over 300 videos, which have been classified by theme.
As a novelty on this channel, the Internet user can view real time weather and temperatures, plus they can upload their own videos of holidays in Spain.
Also within the ‘Brand Channel’ the user can enjoy Turespaña’s latest production, a series of 13 videos based on ‘Timelapse’ photography, which creates moving images using multiple photos. To achieve this, they used more than 3,000 photographs taken over 18,000 kilometres of Spain. Mesquida also presented the new iPad application which allows you to travel through Spain and whose content has been contributed to by users via various social network channels.
Spain has 370,000 fans on Facebook and 20,000 on Twitter
Deputy Director General of Turespaña marketing, Enrique Ruiz de Lera, indicated that Spain has a ‘very important’ presence in the ‘online’ world, and proof of this is the more than 370,000 fans who have ‘liked’ the page ‘I need Spain’ on Facebook and also its 20,000 followers on Twitter.
He added that this presence on the Internet has the potential to attract more tourists to Spain because many visitors decide on their holidays more and more these days following recommendations from other people who have visited the country.
This is an important target advertising strategy for Spain, which is cheaper than conventional media advertising while at the same time being much more effective, as 80% of tourists visiting Spain use the Internet.
The launch of these products is aimed at bringing the country closer to the consumer and showing the many choices available and also complementary alternatives to ‘sun and beach’.
These steps are already yielding positive results, according to Mesquida, who said that they were enjoying an increase of interest in Spanish cultural products. Explaining this he said that 31 million of the nearly 53 million tourists who came to Spain in 2010 took tours or bought souvenirs while on holiday, while 6 million people came to the country attracted exclusively by what it has to offer culturally.
Related Posts
- Spain Pushes Forward In Online Public Services
- Trouble in Egypt Could Mean Tourism Boost for Spain
- Spanish Tourism Figures Better Than Expected
