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CULTURAL AFFAIRS MANAGEMENT PROGRAM University of Barcelona
CULTURAL TOURISM Atracting tourists to the cultural offer
We used to be only a Sun and Surf tourism destination.
There is a new plan on Cultural Tourism that will be aproved in 2011-2012.
in order to reinforce all heritage destinations.
Most spanish heritage destination visitors are national tourists.
And, many times, we don't give enough importancy to this fact.
Except Barcelona, Madrid, Granada, Córdoba, Sevilla, Santiago de Compostela,
where half of their tourism is national and the other half is foreigner,
the rest of spanish tourism is formed by national tourists.
Before opening Sant Bonet to the public, we did a management plan
whose main concern was atracting publics.
We decided on which strategy to follow in order to atract the public
and how to prioritize that public.
We are a funerals company -and not a touristic company- so we started improvising.
But, there is no doubt about the fact that, most of our visitors are local.
But in Poblenou Cemetry, most visitors come in because of the touristic bus at the gates:
Since, in Europe, there's a tradition of visiting cemetries,
many of our tourists get off the bus, stop by the cemetry and, then, head to the city.
We have a target of 300 people a month.
The museum has a public who doesn't come -the "no public"-
who can be atracted through some very especific activities
which give them the opportunity to discover a museum they wouldn't have discovered otherwise.
What we wanted was to prioritize national public.
We know that international public could lead us to the mistake of thinking
that they would come regularly and masively,
when we know that international public only go to La Pedrera, Güell Park, or Dali Museum.
We need to work on the basis of Heritage Destinations that complement each other,
and not with, for example, strategies of competence, which wouldn't really make sense.
You have to work with complementary strategies
and know that, there might be some sectors who prefer
to stay in Ávila and then come to visit Madrid,
and others who prefer to stay in Madrid and organize a network of visits.
We participate with Turisme de Cataluña in workhops on how to atract tourism,
and in those Generalitat iniciatives that aim to contact public.
Actually, international public is increasing thanks to this kind of collaborations,
although it's still a very secondary public.
We believe that, in about 3 or 4 years,
we will be able to attract many more international public.
We can't forget that there is, in Barcelona, a holiday-company mix of 50%-50%.
From this mix, a very high percentage recognises that their main motivation is cultural.
We did our homework many years ago.
In Montserrat, we made a strategic proposal
in the late 90's,
and one of our main objectives at that moment was
that people got involved with Barcelona, I mean,
that they wouldn't have any reserve to identify with the trademark "Barcelona".
Tourism is, generally, a quite polarized phenomenon.
This polarization is based on the strongest heritage referents.
So marketing and heritage cities have played an important part on this.
At the end of the day, we are all fetishistic. When we go to Paris, we go to Louvre,
to see this or that piece of work we've heard about.
so an offer that coudn't compete with Picasso, Dalí and Gaudí
had to focus, at one stage, on national public.
The most classical model of Cultural Tourism linked to the heritage issue
is turning into a cultural model where, cultural offer,
in its broad sense -not only the museums offer but
exhibitions offer, concerts offer, festivals offer, etc.-
is the key for destinations stance and their complementarity.
At the beginning it was difficult to have it.
The key for atracting public was what I have mentioned before:
People used to come to the cemetry thinking of the buried deceased.
At the moment we achieved to get
a few tourists and we told them Barcelona's history through the cemetry,
they were so impressed
and that helped us to develop this route.
Average stay in Barcelona is, in general, very low.
If we talk about statistics, it longs less than two nights.
We make a distinction between people who come through Holiday Inns and through companies.
Those who come through a company are always a low percentage
also in Barcelona.
Those who come for holiday stay longer -about 3 or 4 nights.
Cultural Tourism has a risk:
it runs the danger of not being varied enough.
That works very well for short stays,
but when you want to have tourists for a while,
You have to give them different heritage offers.
You can't only offer visiting Churches, Museums...
they have to see different destinations, different heritages, leisure areas, parties...
The problem is the heritage side, since we don't consider tourism too "undistendable".
They are considered a trivial public.
We should boost a wider variety
so that tourists could find atractive going to visit other heritage elements
apart from those that they already visit,
instead of keeping on boosting a tourism that always go to a same place.
Selecting a destination
implies a good management of the city,
but also a good restaurant trade, good utility companies, information systems, hotels...
Things work better where public-private contracting contexts are more effective.