Prasenjit Chakraborty - Mumbai Plans year-long promotional activities in 2023 to tap various segments
Spain officially launched its campaign on Picasso Celebration 1973-2023 in Mumbai recently. The event was inaugurated by H.E. the Ambassador of Spain to India. Picasso Celebration 1973-2023 will witness many exhibitions and activities in Europe – mainly in Spain and France – and in the USA as well. This is going to be an important occasion for art and culture lovers, and Spain Tourism is naturally making efforts to attract people interested this segment from India.
“We would definitely encourage the travel trade segment to promote Spain on this theme with multiple activities like exhibitions and symposiums, among others, to be held in Spain that will explore multiple facets of Picasso’s art, inspirations and life. It will be certainly a unique opportunity for art and culture lovers, of course, along with exploring the variety of tourism products like luxury, urban tourism, gastronomy, nature, among others, that Spain offers,” said Elisa Robles Fraga, Director, Tourism Office of Spain Mumbai, India, while speaking to TravelBiz Monitor on the sidelines of the event.
She said that the response from Indian travellers visiting Spain post Covid is encouraging. “The response from Indian travellers post-Covid has indeed been excellent,” Fraga said. With the travel restrictions getting more and more relaxed day by day, people are very much interested in compensating for the last two years of travel restrictions. Initially, Spain witnessed good demand from the FIT and smaller group of travellers from India but it is changing now. “Initially we saw a great demand from the FIT and smaller group travel segments, but now even larger travel groups, including MICE, are bouncing back with great demand,” revealed Fraga.
Taking due cognisance, Spain Tourism planned multiple promotional activities in the Indian market for 2023. Besides Tier-I cities, they will also target key Tier-II cities of India as well. “Apart from online campaigns targeted towards consumers and webinars for travel trade, we are also planning multiple familiarization trips for media and travel trade to encourage travels from various segments,” said Fraga.
She admits that Visa is an important issue which is restricting travel. “The issue is not just for Spain, but for other countries as well,” Fraga pointed out. She also said that they have indeed made great improvements in recent years in reducing processing time, and appreciates the tremendous efforts from the Spanish Embassy in New Delhi, Spanish Consulate in Mumbai and their visa processing partner BLS. “We understand that the demand for outbound travel has jumped suddenly and drastically in recent times, but we are constantly assessing the situation and putting our best efforts to ensure that the Indian travellers get their due opportunity to visit and enjoy our beautiful destination,” she said.
Throwing light on connectivity, Fraga said that in the current times of uncertain global economic conditions, all the airlines are reconsidering their strategies, and this issue is in fact very important to them. “Having said that, Spain currently does have multiple connections with India with one stop-over in countries such as UAE, Germany, France and Turkey, among others,” she said.
