Promotion and communication of the attributes of Spain’s tourism brand, as well as the allocation of human, financial and technical resources for promotion purposes, is not sufficiently tailored to the characteristics of each target market.
Supply-side and Destinations
The section analyses the main characteristics of the tourism supply of destination Spain, from the point of view of tourism resource and product.
Strengths:
Great quantity and variety of infrastructure suitable for tourism use.
World leader in seaside-resort tourism, well established and featuring strongly in the tour operation supply, acting as a European benchmark at the service and infrastructure level.
Great diversity and variety of resources that enrich cultural and natural tourism: Spain ranks 2nd and 35th out of 139 countries in the study “The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2011” in terms of cultural and natural resources, respectively. (World Economic Forum, 2011).
Accessibility of nearly all destinations thanks to thoroughgoing development of the transport industry and infrastructure, mainly by land and air. Good climate, high level of law and order and first rate healthcare and assistance services.
Weaknesses:
The downward spiralling or freezing of traditional seaside-resort tourism prices exerts a growing pressure on costs, with a knock on effect on service quality; this eats into profits and therefore reduces ploughback investment in the modernisation of establishments. In 2011 hotel prices fell by over 9% on 2007. (INE, 2011)
Heavy lopsidedness of Spain’s tourism supply in favour of seaside-resort tourism, now showing signs of flagging but still dominating over the other