Face to Face: Ramon Riera, Barcelona Province Council
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A new concept has been created for an area of the Spanish coastline which is now known as Costa Barcelona. Travel Daily spoke to the council’s deputy CEO in tourism to find out what it’s all about.
Why has the Costa Barcelona concept been developed?
The Costa Barcelona brand is strategic to boost tourism around the city of Barcelona in the international markets.
Before its creation in late 2011, there were two coastline brands, Costa Garraf and Costa Barcelona-Maresme. These region’s beaches and cultural aspects have had tourism success as they included well-known villages like Sitges, Calella or Santa Susanna, however they lacked overall visibility.
The Barcelona Provincial Council, in collaboration with the territory and tourism companies, put forward the creation of the brand Costa Barcelona to present itself to the world as a complete tourist destination surrounding the city. Along with beaches, the proposal incorporates promoting the wine, nature, golf and cultural heritage.
The area is already popular with Brits so what does this new angle hope to achieve?
We want to give the region a strong identity.
Costa Barcelona hopes to achieve international recognition and positioning not only for its quality certified beaches but also for its culture and modernism. The region offers exclusive white, rosé and red wines along with the unique sparkling wine, cava, made in the Appellations of Origin of Penedès and Alella.
We will also be promoting our national parks that are parallel to the Mediterranean Sea, where visitors can enjoy a range of outdoor activities.
How will you be telling travel agents about the new branding?
We work closely with UK travel agents as many already sell tourism product in the Costa Barcelona region. We plan to gradually re-educate the travel trade.
The Catalan coastline is now divided into three regions, Costa Brava at the north, Costa Barcelona in the middle surrounding the city of Barcelona and Costa Daurada to the south.
We’ll be reminding trade that some of the most important tourist destinations in the area including Montserrat and Sitges, along with the famous F1 Circuit of Barcelona-Catalunya, belong to Costa Barcelona.
Is the city of Barcelona the main focus here, and what other destinations are included in Costa Barcelona?
It’s important to note that Costa Barcelona doesn’t include promotion of the city itself. The Barcelona Provincial Council works together with Barcelona Tourism to promote tourism in all the area. The two regions have obvious synergies and perfectly complement each other, offering different types of products to visitors.
Costa Barcelona covers 100 kilometres of coastline around the city of Barcelona, along with the interior region, home to a number of national parks.
To the north of the city we include four well know villages, Calella, Santa Susanna, Malgrat de Mar and Pineda de Mar, each of which have been named Family Tourism Destination and are very popular with the British market. To the south is the towns of Sitges, along with Vilanova i la Geltrú with its nautical resort and Castelldefels, named a Sport Tourism Destination.
To the west of the capital is Vilafranca del Penedès where you can go and see human towers being made while, Sant Sadurní d’Anoia is the capital of Cava.
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