Experience luxury in Spain

Ignacio Ducasse Gutierrez, Director, Tourism Office of Spain in India, informs they’ve crossed the 100,000 mark for Indian visitors in 2016.

I n 2017, Spain will be conducting its annual roadshows in the month of September to further boost trade relations in India. Gutierrez says, “We saw a growth of over 10 per cent from the India market in 2016. We are very happy that we have achieved our aim of 100,000 Indian visitors to Spain and in 2017, we will work harder to increase this number.”

With extensive promotions lined up for India, Spain is eying a growth of 10 per cent in 2017 as well. Gutierrez points out that the main segments of Indians travelling to Spain are family travellers while almost 35 per cent of the traffic constitutes of MICE travellers. He explains, “While we will continue to look at family travel but in 2017 we are also shifting focus towards the younger travelling population which may be interested in the partying hubs in Spain like Ibiza. We are also targeting solo women travellers and honeymooners and informing the trade about the various tourism products on offer for this segment.”

Gutierrez further elaborates that while Spain is increasingly attracting a large number of Indian travellers from all segments, Spain has not been well-positioned as a luxury travel destination and in order to represent the luxury travel products, the destination is putting out all information and developing products for this particular segment of travel from India. Tourism Office of Spain in India will conduct its main event tentatively from September 27-29 in three cities – New Delhi, Ahemdabad and Chennai. At this three city event, 20 destinations and tourism companies from Spain will present their products to the travel trade.
Spain has also benefitted from Bollywood movies shot at various locations at the destinations and is aggressively marketing itself as a filmmaker-friendly destination to woo more such projects. “We are very interested in Bollywood and the filming industry and are looking at a couple of proposals from Indian filmmakers in the near future,” adds Gutierrez