The council spent 80,000 euros pre-booking rooms in hotels in order to support them through the scheme, however, to date this scheme has proved far from a roaring success, and since it was launched for the long weekend of the Día de San José on 19thMarch only 31 packages of the 1,000 on offer have been purchased according to a report in the regional Spanish media at the weekend. These have led to only 67 nights being spent by visitors in hotels or at other tourist accommodation in the municipality.
Also included in the packages are various sports and leisure activities within the scheme, which will be extended to beach localities as and when hotels re-open over the next few weeks: almost half of the accommodation block-booked by the Town Hall is on the coast.
At the same time, those taking up the offer can join in guided Spanish-language tourism tours in the city.
In attempting to attract Murcianos from within the region to the city the Town Hall has spent 80,000 euros, but of course there are limits to how much can be achieved while the ban on non-essential travel into and out of the Region of Murcia remains in place, and the scheme was never likely to pull in a lot of people from within the region when so many people from Murcia city own second properties on the coast anyway and the region is so small that it’s possible to drive from one end to the other in less than an hour and a half.
It’s also been noticeable that weekenders feel safer booking rural houses in the countryside at the moment where there is less chance of encountering someone with covid than in the cities, all of which was stacked against Cartagena during the pandemic.
There are hopes that some sort of cruise ship tourism may start to bring in the visitors again this summer, although the latest schemes being discussed by the national ministry are focusing on cruises which will only visit Spanish ports and not be permitted to dock outside of Spain.
And of course, with the state of emergency set to conclude on May 9th, the possibility that Spanish nationals will once again be permitted to move around the country and perhaps book weekend breaks away in other parts of Spain may make the packages more attractive.
International tourism is still very much up in the air at the moment and British nationals are still waiting for the UK Government to confirm whether they will once again be permitted to book flights to Spain for their holidays after May 17.
Tags: Cartagena council
