Tourism

The campaign is aimed at nearby audiences – with Spain, England, France and Italy as the main source markets – in order to make an impact at source and consolidate mature markets through a cultural narrative. Christmas is presented as one of the city’s identifying features, in order to consolidate Barcelona as an essential city for shopping and culture.

Turisme de Barcelona has presented its new campaign to promote Barcelona as a Christmas destination, and it has already been launched in various countries and source markets.  While last year Madrid was the main stage, this year the campaign seeks to make an impact at source, through a cultural message that explains the city’s vitality and dynamism at the most important time of year for shopping and commerce. With this in mind, it will seek to have an impact on the nearest mature markets such as France, Italy and the UK. The aim is to consolidate the city’s reputation – throughout Spain and around the world – as a Christmas destination in southern Europe, making Christmas a reference point for the city’s residents and, consequently, an attraction for potential visitors.

The campaign’s slogan “Barcelona, a Christmas Setting” reflects the extensive cultural and Christmas programme that will permeate every corner of the city, with a wide range of audiences in mind. The main idea is to present Barcelona as a great setting for Christmas, highlighting its open-air commercial network and artistic and creative offerings. It is a city with artistic DNA which is capable of surprising and exciting audiences through its creative and innovative spirit.

The Deputy Mayor, Jaume Collboni, stated that this Turisme de Barcelona campaign presents a broad perspective of Christmas in the city, “taking into account commerce, culture, and the hotel and catering industry”. He added that it seeks “to reach visitors who are looking for new attractions and novel reasons to come to the city, where the whole Christmas programme will lead to a cultural explosion, with high quality, affordable and easy-to-access events”. 

Eduard Torres, President of the Executive Committee of Turisme de Barcelona, spoke about the context and rapid recovery of the sector which “since April has evolved very favourably, with an increase in visitor spending which, together with lengthening their stay, constitutes one of the main pillars in achieving the deseasonalisation and decentralisation of tourism in accordance with the strategy of having a sustainable model of tourism”. The president of Turisme de Barcelona stated that “our goal is to increase average visitor spending to €100 per person per day, accommodation aside”. Torres is confident of achieving that goal of raising the average from €80 to €100 by 2023, in spite of the lacklustre performance of some markets, like those of the UK and Germany, which the crisis seems to have hit a little harder. However, he is confident that the Asian market will continue to recover in the second quarter of the year, and the American market and the MICE segment will be stronger.

Among the campaign’s goals, Xavier Marcé, the Councillor for Tourism, highlighted “the aim of reaching the national public. The city has to work towards attracting it in a more intensive way, because it provides a cushion that is very useful in times of crisis”, and he also remarked on “the importance of Catalan tourism, because it is very important at Christmas, when Barcelona becomes a city for shopping and visiting”.

With the aim of making Barcelona’s Christmas an attraction for national and international visitors, as well as revitalising the city’s commercial fabric, the campaign begins this week in four languages (Catalan, Spanish, English and French) in order to have an impact on the more mature source markets which meet quality objectives, such as the UK, Italy, France and the nearer and better connected markets of Catalonia and Spain. All the countries which the campaign will impact this year make up 55% of all direct hotel reservations made in the last three months.

This is the first of the Christmas campaigns to be launched by the city, in accordance with the need for advance bookings and travel at this time of year and the proactive strategy of considering Barcelona as a Christmas destination. A campaign that begins on 10 November and will continue until 31 December, taking into account the rate of advance bookings about 50 days before Christmas.

Barcelona in Madrid, as part of the Callao illuminations

This year, targeting national audiences, Turisme de Barcelona will project the city in Madrid on the giant screens in Plaza de Callao in order to have a direct impact on one of the most targeted audiences during the pandemic, the national public, which has recovered and now represents over 20% of the total.  The audiovisual “Barcelona, a Christmas Setting” will be shown on two giant screens for a week, with an estimated impact of over 4 million people, the calculated number of passers-by.

Visitor profile 

The new campaign is aimed at visitors who reside nearby, travel as a couple, as a family or by themselves, with a medium-high to high socio-economic level. They are culturally motivated, keen on Barcelona’s traditions and lifestyle, and enjoy shopping. In terms of visitor profiles and the latest Profile Survey from the Observatory of Tourism, it can be seen that after from gastronomy, visitors come to Barcelona for the culture and shopping, while its festivals and concerts are their main motivations and the activities they undertake. The same survey shows that the city’s commercial offer receives a score of 8.2 out of 10 from visitors, and that most of them (93.9%) consider Barcelona to be an ideal city for strolling around, where its shops are part of the city and its way of life. 53.2% of the visitors state that they do all kinds of activities related to shopping.

While last Christmas the national market accounted for 34% of all visitors, this number is expected to fall slightly this year, with the city losing out to renowned markets such as Italy, France and the UK.  These latter markets are expected to recover the Christmas market quota they had prior to the pandemic, i.e. around 25%.

In this regard, the rate of advance bookings for the Christmas period continues to put Spain in first place, with the USA second, followed by nearer markets. Meanwhile, Germany has a lower weighting than in 2019.