/ Town Hall
Wednesday 21st October 2020
CALVIÀ TOURISM FORUM MEETING
The Calvià Tourism Forum met today to take stock of this atypical tourist season and to agree on a promotional strategy for the 2021 season, in which efforts will focus on three outstanding areas: direct promotion in the issuing countries, product-focused promotion and attracting national tourism.
The meeting began with a minute's silence and a few words of remembrance from Mayor Alfonso Rodríguez Badal dedicated to Joan Mesquida, who was Director General of Tourism and Strategic Projects of the Calvià Town Hall from 2015 to 2018.
Promotion strategy proposal for 2021
With a view to the 2021 tourist season, both the Mayor and the General Director of Tourism and Coastline of Calvià, Xavier Pascuet, have detailed the Town Hall's proposal for the municipality.
The main objective for 2021 will be direct promotion in the countries of origin, through public relations. It is an experience that has already been carried out in the German market and that next year will be extended to other European countries such as the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian countries. Thus, the promotional effort will not focus exclusively on tourist fairs, but will be carried out on a continuous basis in the main tourism-emitting countries and in emerging countries, with direct messages to potential visitors.
Another line of action will focus on promoting the product as well as the destination, highlighting all the potential that Calvià has to offer experiences in different areas: tourism-sports, tourism-nature, tourism-gastronomy, tourism-culture and heritage.
Attracting the national market will be a third axis on which action will be taken to reduce the gap that exists in Calvià with regards to international tourism, on which it is highly dependent. An example of this is the percentage of July's overnight stays: of the total of 234.238 overnight stays, only 6.76% corresponded to national tourism.
Likewise, the General Director highlighted that work will continue to be carried out by the State government so that a bond campaign is launched, which can somehow compensate for the IMSERSO trips suspension.
Season balance and beach capacity control
At the beginning of the meeting, a balance was made of a season that has hardly had any activity but that has forced the local administration to activate actions not foreseen in a normal season, such as the beach capacity control, which has forced a reinforce surveillance.
Xavier Pascuet has detailed that the effort made has involved the hiring of 10 people for two months to reinforce the control of beaches in which the Local Police, Civil Protection and the Coastline Department have acted in a coordinated manner. This coordination has made possible to carry out an effective control and not have to vacate any of the more than 30 beaches the municipality of Calvià has thanks to the preventive access closures that have been carried out, more than 200 throughout the Summer.
On the other hand, the Mayor has reviewed the aid provided for in the Municipal Plan for the social, economic and environmental recovery of Calvià, agreed by the Town Hall with all the municipal political groups, Calvià hotel associations, trade unions and business associations ACOTUR, ABONE and CAEB-Restauración, which amounts to almost 9 million euros, and which is practically one hundred percent completed.
Likewise, he welcomed the Regional Government's announcement of extending the lack of ISBA credits for one year, as requested from Calvià, at the request of the business community, and as has also been requested from Calvià for ICO credits, and is confident that aid for the self-employed will be streamlined, in which the Calvià Town Hall has invested 1.5 million euros.
Finally, he reported on the work that is being carried out to opt for funds from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, in the line of presenting transformative projects based on the four axes established by the EU: ecological transition, digital transition and competitiveness, social and territorial cohesion, and equality. One of the projects that is being worked on, for example, is the reconversion of the mature area of Magaluf with its coastline renovation project.
On behalf of the Town Hall's government team, in addition to the Mayor and the General Director of Tourism, the Deputy Mayor Nati Francés, and the Councilwoman Marga Plomer also attended the meeting.
The Calvià Tourism Forum
The Calvià Tourism Forum, created in 2016, is constituted as a space for debate, dialogue and collaboration between all the agents directly linked to the tourist activity that takes place in Calvià. Its main functions revolve around the analysis of matters directly related to the tourist activity that takes place in the municipality of Calvià and the issuance of reports and recommendations on this subject with a merely advisory and non-binding nature.
The Forum is made up of: the mayor and councillors involved in tourism matters, the General Director of Tourism of Calvià, political groups with municipal representation in Calvià, the Chamber of Commerce, Fomento de Turismo, Fundación Calvià 2004, the municipality's hotel associations, federations and business groups (commerce, restaurants, complementary offer, leisure and services), UGT and CCOO (unions with majority representation in the municipality), the UIB, neighborhood representatives of the areas of greater tourist activity and consumer organisations, amongst others.
