2021-2024 Strategic Marketing Plan

Turespaña's Strategic Marketing Plan sets out the strategic guidelines for Turespaña's activity between 2021 and 2024.

In the years before the pandemic, Spain had established itself as one of the world's leading tourist destinations, achieving its strongest data in both number of tourists and tourist spending in 2019. Despite this, Spain suffered from a number of weaknesses, including its high territorial, seasonal and motivational concentration. This is in addition to a high market share of nearby source countries, occupying a less relevant position than other competitors, especially Asia. Finally, Spain had battled with an image problem associated with the overcrowding and lack of sustainability of some of its destinations, as well as a lack of positioning for some of its most significant attributes, such as historical heritage.The outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020 saw tourist activity brought to a standstill in the immediate aftermath. The recovery in demand has been intermittent and uneven, affected by the appearance of new variants of the disease, vaccinations and restrictions on mobility.There are a variety of recovery scenarios that foresee a return to pre-pandemic levels in 2024. This recovery will initially be seen in European markets, followed by America and the Middle East and, finally, Asia.Against this backdrop, the Strategic Marketing Plan sets out two major objectives.The first of them bears in mind the impact of the pandemic and recovery scenarios. The shorter-term, aim is to “restore the demand for quality international tourism in Spain”.The second objective looks at more structural elements and aims to address the shortcomings of the Spanish model. Here, a longer time frame is required, with the clear objective of “identifying and attracting more economically interesting tourists who contribute to the sustainability of the destination”.Four strategic lines have been established around these two main aims: Recovery of demand, social sustainability (improve territorial cohesion by taking action regarding the distribution of tourist flows), environmental sustainability (as an attribute of the Marca España tourist brand) and economic sustainability (by promoting the highest added value offer and attracting tourists with high average spending). In turn, these pillars are divided into 15 lines of action.The Plan provides for three types of destination: sun, sea and sand, urban and nature/inland.These are used to define the 7 segments of demand, which in particular influence promotional actions. The segments linked to sun, sea and sand destinations are: More than sea (M&M); Families, sea and sand (FAM); and sun, umbrella and yummy (SUNNY). The segments linked to urban destinations are: Shopping, urban, modern and open (SUMA); and totally cultural (Culto). Finally, the segments linked to nature/inland destinations are: Joy of missing out (JOMO); and Roadies.An eighth segment has now been included, which was not taken from the previous methodology. This is the LGTBI+ segment, which has its own special travel consumption habits and which contributes positively to Spain's positioning abroad, as well as to the achievement of the Plan's objectives.The Plan also defines criteria for the prioritization of source markets, based on the market potential and Spain's current competitive position in each of them. Based on this analysis, eight market groups have been obtained, with shared characteristics, linked to the activity of the network of Departments of Tourism abroad.Finally, the tactics and actions to be undertaken are outlined and the resulting indicators are defined.