Spain has launched a major new marketing campaign targeting GCC tourists for the first time under the tag line ‘I need Spain’.
The campaign has been launched in the Middle East following the start of daily direct Emirates Airline flights to Madrid which began on 1 August.
With the new daily Dubai, Madrid flights, the Spanish Tourism Board is targeting a growth of at least 50 to 60,000 tourists from the Middle East to Spain in one year – or triple the current numbers.
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The new GCC campaign has been specifically designed to target the Middle Eastern tourist, with one ad even depicting a Middle East couple, and abaya-clad lady shopping in one of Spain’s upmarket designer stores.
Enrique Ruiz de Lera, head of marketing and branding at Spain’s Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade who introduced the new campaign to media in Dubai said:
“We have consulted a lot of people before doing this campaign to make sure these ads were compliant culturally in this region and I think people will like them. Showing the Middle Eastern couple shopping in Spain, is very elegant, very aspirational and very classy.”
Last month the Institute of Tourism of Spain appointed a representative office in the Middle East, BlueLink.
De Lera added that as well as the marketing campaign targeting consumers, the tourism board was also planning a big push to work with the trade in the form of fam trips and training programmes.
“We have plans of course to work with the trade channel, the first thing we need to do is educate travel agents about what Spain is about because they mostly know Andalucía and Costa del Sol, which are the most popular destinations here for locals, but there is so much more to see in Spain. So the first thing we will do is set up a training programme and of course start inviting travel agents to Spain so that they can start to experience what the destination is about.”
The campaign will be rolled out in the region in the coming months.
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