With a strong growth rate of 100 per cent in Jan-April 2015, Spain has clearly emerged as one of the latest hotspot for the Indian travellers. In the last 5 years, travel to Spain from India has grown from 33,591 tourist arrivals in 2011 to 84,903 tourist arrivals in 2015. In 2016, the destination is focusing to cross the 100,000 mark with a growth rate of 10-15 per cent. Also, this year the IIFA Awards will be held in Madrid, which will further boost the tourism footfall from India.
Speaking about the growth, Ignacio Ducasse Gutierrez, Tourism Counselor – Embassy of Spain in India and Director of Tourism Office of Spain said, “India is a very important market for Spain and one of our priority emerging markets worldwide. We witnessed a strong growth of 100 per cent in the months of Jan-April 2015, vis-à-vis the same period last year with arrivals increasing from 10,000 in Jan-April 2014 to 20,000 in Jan-April 2015. The subsequent months of summer i.e. May and June slowed down a bit in terms of the number of arrivals in comparison to the previous year. However, there was a quick recovery post the slowdown, with a surge in arrivals from India in the months of July-September. Overall, the growth has been steady and consistent. We are positive that our promotional efforts this year, including various events such as the World Tapas Day on the 16th of June and the IIFA Awards that will be held in the weekend of 23-26 June in Madrid, will result in a positive increase in the number of arrivals from India.”
In 2015, Spain also witnessed a good average length of stay by Indians which was between 8-10 days and the average spends were approximately 204 Euros per day and 1,976 Euros for the whole trip (including airfare). To further increase these figures, Spain is now promoting novel destinations and products to the India market. Gutierrez added, “Last year, we introduced the North of Spain (Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria and the Basque Country). This year, besides the main Spanish cities such as Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia etc. we will also pay special attention to the North of Spain again, the Canary Islands and the 15 World Heritage Cites.”
Spain has also witnessed some movements in the MICE segment. Through marketing campaigns, the destination is also promoting the wedding and honeymoon segment in India which is being executed in association with WeddingSutra. He said, “MICE is an integral part of our marketing plan and there has been an increase in the interest shown by Indian MICE planners to Spain as a MICE destination. The interest has increased both in terms of the variety of possible destinations thanks to the number of international fairs and medical congresses that take place in the main Spanish cities. Going by the figures for MICE and business trips, it has been observed that there has been an increased demand in these kinds of trip to Spain, particularly in the months of July to September.”
Speaking about their promotional strategies, Gutierrez said, “To cater to the Indian travel trade, we have organised presentations in several cities this year including; Pune, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad, roadshows (workshops and networking evenings) in Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata in October, fully hosted destination familiarisation trips for selected MICE focused Indian travel trade and are studying the possibility of introducing an online travel trade training course. Furthermore, we were present at SATTE and will be participating in the MILT Congress in July.”
Currently Spain’s key source markets are UK, France and Germany with 55 per cent of arrivals coming from these three countries, which are approximately 37.5 million tourists from the total of 68.1 million tourists received in 2015. Gutierrez further stated that they are paying special attention to the BRIC countries and have witnessed a surge in arrivals from Russia and China in particular.
