Isabel María Oliver Sagreras, Secretary of State for Tourism & President of Turespaña • Interview

The number of international tourists visiting Spain has soared in recent years, but future success will largely depend on successful coordination between all the stakeholders and investments in sustainable development.

With more than 82 million tourists, Spain broke its own record in 2018. What are the main challenges that your organization has gone through?

2018 was an excellent year for the tourism sector. Some of our competitors have started to recover in 2019, so we have to continue working to consolidate our sustained growth. One of our main aims is to re-initiate the conversations between town halls, autonomous communities, and the central government to coordinate our efforts. To this end, we restarted the National Tourism Council after years of no activity. The council assesses the tourism industry with representatives from both the private and public sectors. We have appointed some new members to create a new vision for this council. We also held a meeting for Turespaña’s management board, which also had not met in several years, and included the private sector in it. Within the Secretary of State, we have held several meetings to find solutions to the challenges faced by the tourism sector.

The marketing strategic plan for 2018-19 has the goal of reaching high-quality tourists. What are the measures included in the plan?

The plan is still being developed. We are launching some campaigns to boost tourism online. We want to consolidate Spain’s traditional markets such as the UK, Germany, and France, and also seek tourists from markets who have not traditionally come to Spain. These are high-end consumers who are more interested in culture and traditions and tend not to travel during the peak season. We are seeking these tourists in emerging markets, as well as in Asia Pacific countries and the US. We want to use our well-known brand in the markets in which we are already known, and focus on these new markets.

Luxury tourism in Madrid has been somewhat behind other European cities. What are you doing to address this?

We think that the most important thing is to have a strong product and promote it, and at present, we are working on different products. In the shopping tourism segment, Spain is ranked fourth just behind

France, the UK, and Italy. Spain still has a lot of space in this area to continue growing. This is a kind of tourist who has a high net worth and is complementary to other segments, because they might be interested in culture, culinary experiences, or visiting. They might come to watch a La Liga game, and then go to a wine cellar. This is an interesting product for Asia Pacific. One prominent step we are taking is making visa requirements easier.

Spain has good infrastructure and facilities. Spain also has good connections with Europe and the rest of the world. The country has good professionals in this sector, and is famous around the world for its landscapes and gastronomy. Given these ingredients, we can just improve further.

What markets are particularly interesting for Spain within Latin America?

We have few tourists from Latin America, but those who visit us have strong purchasing power. Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela are some of those markets.

We think that Paradores will stay in the hands of the government. In 2018, the company made EUR15 million in profits. We are using Paradores to promote the varied gastronomy of Spain. We want to improve our facilities and open two new Paradores in 2019. This is a network that could be also interesting for MICE tourists, like the Paradores in Alcalá de Henares or La Granja de San Ildefonso, which offer business facilities.

We have started to work on the tourism strategy 2030. We want to focus on five areas: collaborative governance, sustainable growth, competitive transformation, product, and tourism intelligence, which are concepts that have to be incorporated in the entire strategy. Of course, the strategy will be fully in line with the sustainable development goals. ✖