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Lloret de Mar opens up to the Irish market

Lloret Turisme has travelled to Dublin to take part in the Holiday World Show, which takes place from 27 to 29 January and attracts more than 70,000 visitors, including both professionals and the general public.

Lloret Turisme is attending with the Costa Brava Girona Tourist Board and the Catalan Tourism Agency, and has already held meetings with various tour operators such as Sunway, the country’s leading tour operator, which will be operating in Lloret de Mar for the first time this season. Ireland has connections to Girona Airport from the country’s four main airports, starting operations from Dublin and Cork this April. For Elizabeth Keegan, manager of Lloret Turisme, “this is a new opportunity to attract a loyal, family-oriented tourist who is looking for sun and sand and who values the complementary offerings such as culture and gastronomy”.

This week Lloret Turisme also travelled to Pontevedra to monitor the European project Greentour: Circular Economy and Sustainable Tourism in Destinations in the SUDOE area, of which Lloret de Mar is a partner and which has involved around fifteen accommodation, catering and activity companies in the destination.

The Lloret Convention Bureau, a division specialising in the promotion of meetings and events in Lloret de Mar, travelled to the province of Malaga this week to carry out a series of sales visits with YT Serveis, a representation company. The action has made it possible to visit 15 event organising agencies in the south of Spain in the cities of Málaga, Torremolinos and Benalmádena.

 

The Lloret Convention Bureau promotes itself in Nordic countries

The Lloret Convention Bureau, together with Evenia Hotels and Hotel L’Azure, is currently in the Nordic countries taking part in a promotional tour organised by the Costa Brava Pirineu de Girona Tourist Board, with the aim of presenting Lloret de Mar’s specialised offer in meetings and events tourism.

The promotional event began on 3 May in Oslo with a presentation to forty agencies specialising in Premium and MICE and today it is in Stockholm with another promotional presentation aimed at thirty agencies also specialising in Premium, MICE and golf. In both cases the destination’s offer was presented, followed by a cocktail workshop inspired by the Costa Brava and the Girona Pyrenees with Gerard Ruiz of Cocktail Time, and ended with a networking dinner. In parallel to the promotional activities, commercial visits were made to local agencies such as FIRMATUR, AMEX, KJENTFOLK, EVENTYR and PLAYROOM, among others.

The Lloret Convention Bureau has already been hosting various events for Scandinavian agencies and companies for years, such as the international convention of the service station company Q8, the sports services provider Korpen and the technology company Pleo.

The Director of the Lloret Convention Bureau, Montse Belisario, explains that “event organisers particularly value the ease of mobility on foot throughout the city, the diversity of experiences we can offer them, this specialisation as a coastal destination with good value for money, and above all combined with our strategic location and good weather”.

Last weekend Lloret de Mar hosted a familiarisation trip for the Deluxe Travel Market international workshop, an event organised by Chance Travel Consulting with the participation of the Costa Brava Girona Tourist Board through its Premium Marketing Clubs and the Costa Brava Girona Convention Bureau, which was attended by around fifty organisers at the Hostal La Gavina S’Agaro and Alàbriga Hotel & Home Suites. In Lloret, the thirty or so members of the familiarisation trip were able to enjoy a guided tour of the Santa Clotilde Gardens, our unique space that is ideal for holding all kinds of events and which is part of the European Itinerary of Historic Gardens by the Council of Europe.

Nordic outbound market data

According to data from the Catalan Government’s Business and Employment Observatory, in 2019 Lloret de Mar welcomed 1.25% of tourists from the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland), specifically 0.47% from Sweden, 0.39% from Norway, 0.25% from Denmark and 0.14% from Finland.

Lloret Turisme takes part in a promotional campaign with Jet2 Holidays to publicise its family tourism offer in the UK

Lloret Turisme took part yesterday in Bristol in a promotional event organised by the Catalan Tourism Agency with around forty agents from the British airline Jet2 Holidays. This promotional event is part of the promotional campaign of the airline Jet2, which this season is launching a new route connecting the Costa Brava with Bristol from Girona Airport. Also confirmed are the existing routes from Girona to the United Kingdom from 2019 with the same operator with the cities of Birmingham, East Midlands, Leeds, London-Stansted, Manchester and Newcastle.

The Mayor of Lloret de Mar, Jaume Dulsat, explained that “The company’s forecast for this season is 50,000 seats and 11 flights a week to Girona airport, which is very positive. Of this total, a significant number will spend the night in Lloret de Mar, where Jet2 has signed agreements with almost thirty hotels”. According to the Mabrian tourism intelligence tool, which Lloret Turisme works with, in 2022 the United Kingdom will be the market with the second highest number of tourist mentions of Lloret de Mar after Spain.

During the event, Lloret de Mar and Salou, the only tourist destinations in Catalonia to take part, were able to present the region’s tourism offer to the participating agents, and the event closed with a networking event for all those attending.

In the words of Elizabeth Keegan, manager of Lloret Turisme, “It is a pleasure to be able to recover these promotional actions with the British market after a year with almost no international mobility. This type of action allows us to continue to focus on our traditional markets and, in this case, specifically on the offer specialising in family tourism, the main profile of the operator Jet2 Holidays, with whom we have closed other comarketing actions for 2022″. This operator currently has a contract with 29 hotels in Lloret de Mar.

Since 2010 Lloret de Mar has been certified as a Family Tourism Destination by the Catalan Tourism Agency and currently has 24 certified establishments, including accommodation and activity companies.

The British market was the third largest outbound market for Lloret de Mar in 2019, with 121,142 travellers from this source, 9.2% of the total number of travellers and a total of 660,577 overnight stays, 11.3% of the destination’s total number of overnight stays. More than 14,000 came through this operator, with approximately 50% of its clients being families and the other 50% couples.

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Lloret de Mar unveils Lloret Cycling, the destination’s cycling project, featuring 12 routes

The Municipal Library was the chosen venue this morning for the presentation of Lloret’s newly structured cycling product, designed over the first half of the year with the goal of promoting this sports product, in line with the 2017 action plan of Lloret Turisme.

The project, of great strategical importance to the destination, has been carried out in partnership with Extrem Team, a consulting company specialising in active and sports tourism, and with the support of Selva County Council and the Inverse sports brand. Specific materials have been produced in order to inform tour operators and end customers of everything the destination has to offer cyclists.

According to Jaume Dulsat, Mayor of Lloret de Mar, “Cycling is a strategic product for Lloret de Mar that helps us to reduce the seasonal nature of tourism, since this activity is mainly concentrated between November and June. Thanks to this structuring process we know we have a good product that will serve to position our city as a hub for cyclists in which to stay and from which to complete routes throughout the area.”

A total of six road cycling and six mountain biking routes have been defined with the goal of offering options with low traffic density and which incorporate elements of natural and heritage interest. Furthermore, two maps in five languages have been created for each discipline with technical information on the 12 routes. The maps have been uploaded to the Wikiloc and Strava apps, both popular with cyclists. The Lloret Cycling user club has also been created on Strava. A dedicated website has been launched (cycling.lloretdemar.org) that contains all the cycling services and products offered by both public and private organisations in Lloret de Mar.

Promotion of the new cycling product will begin at the Sea Otter Europe Fair, taking place in Girona from 2 to 4 June, where Lloret Turisme will have its own stand. In relation to this event, Lloret de Mar will be hosting a workshop next Saturday organised by the Costa Brava Tourist Board, which will be attended by 15 international tour operators and ten establishments from Lloret and the surrounding area. This year, Lloret Turisme has already been present at the Fahrrad & Erlebnis-Reisen cycling fair in Stuttgart and will be at the Eurobike Show in Friedrichshafen (Germany) and at the Unibike Show in Madrid in August and September.

As Elizabeth Keegan, Director of Lloret Turisme, explained, “After all this work, we’ve defined five reasons to train in Lloret that put us in a stronger position than other destinations: an unbeatable climate, a great atmosphere for cyclists in the area, a wide variety of roads and tracks to train on, 14 hotels specialised in cycle tourism and the fact that Lloret offers services of great value to cyclists, such as technical services and a wide range of eating options.”

Lloret de Mar has been a certified Sports Tourism Destination since 2006 and boasts 14 hotels specialised in cycling tourism, 12 of which are certified by the Catalan Tourist Board. More than 3,000 amateur and professional cyclists choose the destination every year for their sport stays.