Our Spanish tourism world, for the most part, will have to face major “physical” changes in its structures , cities, resorts and venues , whose offerings in types of accommodation and services will have to adapt to the tourism market segments we “choose”… if we don’t want to keep just dreaming about “the concept of quality tourism”.
It’s clear that many hotels and cities have already transformed their offerings.
Today, the concept of “quality”… which is on “everyone’s” lips among business owners, regardless of the “category” of their venue/hotel, capacity, services, location and connections… is very personal and undefined…. we are going to have to start defining it according to the market segments we are targeting or think we can access… The future of tourism is not determined by what we want it to be…. And no matter how much we wish it would change to fit what we want, we know that…
Tourism chooses destinations where the offering of services, quality and price presented to the customer for their event or for the reason of their trip/stay contains what they are looking for, according to the activities that they, as travelers or as a consumer group, are seeking and want to find…
Perhaps a good starting point would be to accept that we should look inward… being analytical, critical and constructive to understand what we need to adapt in our facilities and offerings to their demands and economic possibilities, both individually as a venue and as part of a larger offering in a resort or city. Let’s take into account our connections with the rest of the world and what we as a city offer in terms of culture and leisure to tourists or groups…. let’s assess our venues, their “real” category in terms of facilities and services, capacity, locations, connections, quality, community services, structures, prices, etc. etc. in order to try to create and define the product aimed at the customer segment we are trying to attract…. later we will develop a marketing and sales plan, and after the appropriate “benchmarking” or market studies… we act.
Maybe, to understand where we come from and why we are where we are, if we remember and analyze, we will recall that one day years ago Spain almost entirely bet “all its chips” indiscriminately on a generic concept: “vacation tourism”, whether city or beach. We were talking about tourists who were offered a “product” in the form of “packages”, and thanks to that type of offering, mostly defined as “sun and beach vacation”, we won an entire global market.
That tourism concept or vacation segment evolved quickly because the accommodation and service offerings had been created for that purpose… a generic offering with promotion aimed at a specific demand, which originated mainly in European source markets and customers captured through stable, specific economic offers very much in line with the purchasing power of those customers.
It seems that after the changes forced by the arrival of the internet, driven by “third parties”, we ended up in the hands of “unknown” third parties — that is, websites that became intermediaries… today’s “jailers” who commercialize most of the accommodations…. we, “the supply”… the industry players in the tourism world, lost customer loyalty and suffered, almost by obligation, the consequences of technology because overnight we were left alone with our Spain, our resorts, hotels, venues and beaches, but with no control over our customers or our source markets, which we lost completely…. and we fell indiscriminately, either out of ignorance or convenience, into the hands of ‘Morpheus’… those commercial networks that eagerly emerged as “modern saviors”…
For a time we became very disoriented regarding the consumer of our product… we simply accepted “consumers who buy from us on websites for no reason”… because we had lost the intermediary commercializing customers and their markets… And our regular, natural customers… Disconnecting ourselves even from transport…
Now we realize and say that the consumers coming to us are not the clientele we want….
We venture to say, after reflecting?, that now we need to attract “quality tourism”…. In my opinion, that is the moment when perhaps we have to think that our hotel or venue is located where it is, that it was built for what it was built for, and that its characteristics are what they are…. and if we are capable of reinventing ourselves to define a new offering of our product, price, quality, services for specific markets… we will also have to redefine structures and leisure offerings to go after that desired segment.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea, nor that the desire isn’t realistic. What I do believe is that this much-praised change has a long road ahead…. let’s analyze it… if the consumer who comes to us is not the customer we want… how
is the one we do want going to reach us?…
As simple as it is complex.
José Aleixandre Caballero
Technical Director Consultant for Tourism Companies and Activities
