Scottish tourism businesses on VisitScotland trade mission to Italy and Spain
Sagrada Familia, Barcelona
Representatives from Scotland’s tourism sector joined forces and headed to Italy and Spain in September to forge stronger business relationships with their European counterparts.
Building on the launch of several new direct air routes from Edinburgh to Barcelona, Madrid and Milan this year, the 11 Scottish businesses travelled to each of the destinations to showcase Scotland and encourage local tour operators to develop their Scotland product.
The five-day mission provided a valuable platform for Scottish businesses to engage with Spanish and Italian travel operators. The trade mission gave the participating Scottish businesses an opportunity to meet with 10-15 local travel trade operators in each city on a one to one basis. Although the Spanish and Italians tend to organise their trips more independently, the travel trade in these markets do form an important part in the booking process.
Spain and Italy are two of Scotland’s key European markets bringing in almost 250,000 visitors and £144 million each year. The new direct flights give us the potential to grow these markets even further.
The Madrid route is especially significant as it is the first direct air link from the Spanish capital, which provides great opportunities for Scottish tourism in what is a very lucrative market. The new Clickair route from Barcelona, which started in August, is also expected to continue in 2008.
The new Milan routes are hoped to access the residents in Northern Italy which are meant to have the highest propensity to travel abroad, opening up Scotland to a market of more than 7.4 million potential visitors.
In order to support this development VisitScotland simultaneously launched the City Gateway Website in Spanish and Italian which provides all information about a City Break in and around Edinburgh and Glasgow.
For more information about Spanish and Italian visitors and the tourism market in these countries, go to:
www.visitscotland.org/country_profiles-spain
www.visitscotland.org/country_profiles-italy
|
