Use of Events for Tourism in the City of Barcelona - Report Example

USE OF EVENTS FOR TOURISM IN THE OF BARCELONA By Location Use of Events for Tourism in the Of Barcelona Barcelona is one of the two largest cities in Spain with a population of almost 500000 people. Barcelona is located toward the northeastern Mediterranean coast of Spain. Barcelona is among the top twenty tourist destination cities in Europe. In Spain, it is considered to be the most popular tourist destination. The tourist attractions in this city include sporting events, recreational areas, festivals, historical monuments, and many others. This paper aims at discussing how the city of Barcelona has attempted to use events to pursue wider objectives in tourism. Rationale The tourism strategy in Barcelona aims at developing a tourism model that will ensure that a balance is maintained between the local residents and tourist. It also aims at maintaining the identity values of this particular city. One of the values that the strategy fights to keep is the rich culture. It also maintains the values that make it attracting all sorts of tourist ranging from those who are interested in sport events, cultural festivals, religious events, and many others. Background The city of Barcelona has on many occasions had a boost to its tourism industry as a result of international events. These events include the visit by Benedict the XVI, the Barcelona marathon, Formula 1 Gran Prix of Barcelona, the Aphrodite – Les Folies Tour, Barcelona 1992 Summer Olympics, Barcelona Open, La Merçè Festivity, and the champion league finals. These events attracted thousands of visitors to the city of Barcelona and earned the city a lot of income. Benedict the XVI visit to Barcelona Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Barcelona on the 6th of November 2010. His mission to Barcelona was to preside over the consecration of Barcelona’s Cathedral La Sagrada Familia. During the visit, the Pope held a private meeting with the queen and king of Spain. The visit is believed to have generated a total income of about € 39 million to the city of Barcelona as a result of the activities that took place during the visit. More than half of this income is believed to have come from the expenditures of the visitors whose main attraction to Barcelona was the Pope’s visit. The income came from business activities such as transport, accommodation, shopping, restaurants, and many others (Smith 2012, p. 201). This event also played a very important role in marketing Barcelona as a tourist destination. The visitors who came specifically for the pope’s visit must have noticed the very many tourist attractions in Barcelona. Barcelona Marathon The city of Barcelona hosted the Barcelona Marathon of 2013. The marathon took place on the 17th of March 2013. The competition involved athletes from all over the world. The Barcelona Marathon first took place in the year 1980, and its fame has grown gradually over the years. In the year 2012 16, 743 athletes were registered for the marathon. During this marathon, city always gets lots of visitors who either come to participate in the event or just witness the event. Apart from being a tourist attraction by itself, it also helps allot in creating global awareness of the other tourist attractions in the city of Barcelona. Formula 1 Gran Prix Barcelona 2013 The city of Barcelona hosted the fifth Formula 1 Grand Prix of the season. These events took place in between the 10th and 12th of May 2013. During this event, the city received a lot of visitors from all over the world. Most of them were people who came specifically to experience the formula 1 event (Chalip and McGuirty2004, p. 272). This can mean that it generally increased the number of visitors that the city hosted in that year. This would mean that they also had an extra income because of this event. Other businesses such as accommodation and restaurants also benefited from this event. Income was also earned through the sales of tickets. Kylie Minogue in Barcelona Kylie Minogue is an internationally known Australian singer. Kylie Minogue brought her ‘Aphrodite – Les Folies Tour’ on the 12th of March 2012. Aphrodite refers to Minogue’s eleventh album while the Aphrodite – Les Folies World Tour was a tour meant to promote the album in Australia, Europe, Asia, and North America. This tour was a relief to the tourism industry in Barcelona (Foley, McGillivray and McPherson 2012, p. 108). The city hosted thousands of Kylie Minogue’s fans from all over Spain. This means that various sectors of the tourism sector in Barcelona city benefited from the presence of this singer in the city. For instance, the visitors obviously were accommodated and were offered other services like transport, resultant services, and shopping. This event is likely to have acted as a marketing activity to the various tourist attractions in the city. Barcelona 1992 Summer Olympics The summer Olympics of 1992 took place in the city of Barcelona. In preparation for these games, the city was forced to develop some infrastructures that are believed to have played a very crucial role in increasing the city’s popularity as a global tourist destination (Gold and Gold 2009, p. 203). Apart from the infrastructure that was developed, the Olympic also saw thousands of people visiting the city with the intention of being part of the people who witnessed that year’s celebration of the Olympics. This led to an increase in income of various sectors of the tourism industry in Barcelona (Getz 2004, p. 145). These sectors include accommodation, transport, and shopping. It is also likely that the visitor who came to this event visited other tourist attractions in the city. Barcelona Open Barcelona Open refers to an ATP World Tour series of tennis tournament. This tournament is held annually at the Barcelona Royal Tennis Club. This tournament always attracts participants from all over the world. As a result of this tournament the city also receives many visitors who come to the city with the main aim of being there during the tournament (Fourie and Santano-Gallego 2011. P. 123). Most of these visitors are tennis fans that come there to watch their favorite player participate in the tournament. The visitors who come to this tournament come from all over Spain and even other countries. The result of this visit is an increase of activities in the tourism industry and thus an increase in income. F.C. Barcelona F.C. Barcelona refers to a football club that is based in the city of Barcelona. It is the most popular sports clubs in Barcelona and preferably one of the world’s best football clubs. It is the world’s second richest football club. Their stadium is known as Camp Nou. Apart from holding F.C Barcelona’s home matches, Camp Nou also have hosted various international sports (Richards and Palmer 2010, p. 127) stadium has hosted a number of champion league finals. Champions’ league is a European soccer tournament which brings together the best team from each and every national league in Europe with the aim of determining which of these clubs should be crowned as the best European football club of the season. Events like the champions league final always bring a lot of football fans to the hosting city. Due to the fact that this tournament is followed by football fans from all over the world, the final is likely to attract many visitors. The big number of visitors is likely to be a big advantage to the tourism industry in the city of Barcelona. Apart from the finals of the champion league, the stadium also hosted the finals of the football games of the 1992 Olympics. Apart from being used for football events the stadiums have also hosted a major event by international musicians. The international musicians who have performed at Camp Nou include Bruce Springsteen, Josep Carreras, Michael Jackson, LluisLlach, Julio Iglesias, and many others (Chalip 2004, p. 237). This only means that during these events the city had to host thousands of visitors from all over the world. The stadium also has a museum which is considered to be one of the biggest tourist attractions of the city. La Merçè Festivity Barcelona La Merçè is a festival carried out on an annual basis in the city of Barcelona. La Merçè was made an official city holiday in the year 1871. This festival is always meant to mark the end of the summer. The festivals are always characterized by fireworks, music, tradition, community action, art, performance and much more (Ali-knight 2009, p. 123). This festival has gradually developed into a global tourist attraction and lately has been attracting many tourists to the city of Barcelona. With such events, the tourism industry in Barcelona is assured of visitors in large numbers towards the end of summer every year. Problems and issues associated with the city’s events strategy There are various problems that relate to the use of vents in the tourism industry in the city of Barcelona. Organizing of events that might act as tourist attractions to visitors from all over the world will require a lot of investments. These investments always come in the form of improvement of infrastructure, improvement of security, and marketing. In some occasions, the city might find itself spending more resources as compared to the earning they will get from the events (Getz 2007, p. 187). However, when it comes to infrastructure, the investment should not be considered a loss in any way. For instance, when the city invested in infrastructure during the 1992 Olympic Games, the events might not have brought back the full amount spent on infrastructure. However, the same infrastructure has been used for various other international events without having to invest in the infrastructure again. The other this is that during the international events, the city faces very many security threats. Given that they are welcoming people of all sorts and in big masses, ill minded people like terrorists can take advantage of such situation (Crespi-Vallbona, and Richards 2007, p. 113). In case something like that happens it will really ruin the reputation of the city as a tourist destination. An overall assessment of how successful the city’s events strategy has been The events have been really successful in improving the tourism industry in Barcelona. First of all they have been bringing lots of visitors to the city. Whenever a city receives visitors in large numbers various economic aspects are likely to benefit from this event (Finkel2009, p. 122). The visitors will obviously need a place to spend their nights, a place to eat and to do shopping. This will likely to positively impact businesses such as hotels and motels, restaurants, and shopping mall. In this sense, the events can be considered to be tourist attractions in the city of Barcelona. This is because they manage to attract visitors from all over the world to the city of Barcelona. The other significance of these events is that they act as marketing activities for the other tourist attractions in the city of Barcelona (Bradley and Hall 2006, p. 101). This is explained by the fact that when visitors come to the city to witness a certain event, they are likely to notice the other tourist attractions in the city. When they get back to their respective home cities, they are likely to let their friends and family know of the amazing tourist attraction of Barcelona. The result of this event will therefore be an increased number of people wanting to visit the city so that they can witness the amazing tourist attractions by themselves (Gotham 2005, p. 165). Recommendations for future practice There are various improvements that can be made to ensure the growth of event tourism in Barcelona. One of such is making sure that they completely publicize these events and making the world know exactly what is unique with what they offer. They could also consider using the events as a chance to market the other tourist attractions in the city. This can be achieved by making sure that visitors are made aware of all the cultural rich tourist attractions in the city. This will lead to an increase in the popularity of the city’s tourism attractions globally. 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