The city of Marbella returns to revalidate its position as a leading destination of luxury tourism in Europe by 2022, and the last ranking prepared by the travel portal ‘European best destination’ places the Costa del Sol city at the forefront thanks to a varied range of products and services.
The result was announced last Thursday, leaving the town in the second place only behind Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, after obtaining 61,401 votes in the framework of a campaign that took place between January 20 and February 10, and in which Marbella was shortlisted as one of the 20 best European destinations from an initial list of 400 candidates.
The travel portal is associated with the Eden Network, created by the European Commission, and the promotion provided is estimated to will reach more than 420 million travelerswith the city present during the initiative in media such as Forbes USA, Condé Nast Travelers, Geo, National Geographic, Yahoo or Corriere Viaggi, among others.
The General Director of Tourism of the Marbella City Council, Laura de Arce, has highlighted “The satisfaction and pride” of having been the city in the second position in a ranking of 400 destinations.
“We have been left with almost 15,000 votes difference in second place, but curiously we are the most voted city in the United Kingdom”, The municipal official has valued despite the fact that London was on the list of the 20 destinations together with Marbella, which in her opinion “demonstrates that loyalty that we have with the English client”.
On the other hand, he pointed out that at an advertising level, participation in this ranking represents “a great accolade for the promotional campaign that is implicit”, since the town will have coverage during the year 2022 “in all international media both in the United States and in Europe.”
In this way, it has indicated that the portal values “the promotional campaign in about 2 million euros”, something that “at no time could we invest that amount of money in promotion outside the city”. To give an example, he has pointed out that last year “tourism grew by 14% in a city that ranked thirteenth.”
The positioning of the Costa del Sol destination in the world luxury segment is evidenced by the agreements reached with the main associations of the segment both in Europe and in the United States, with promotional collaborations with associated agents.
This is the case of the agreement signed with traveler made, the “Association of European Luxury Travel Agencies”, that a congress will be held in the city on March 28 that will bring together some 600 agents, the Director of Tourism has indicated. The document includes the celebration of this event for three years in Marbella, and that it was already addressed in 2019 with “almost 600 luxury travel agents from around the world” and in 2021 it was carried out electronically.
Another of the City Council’s collaborations linked to the high segment standing is the one achieved with Virtuoso, an “association of US luxury travel agencies” with which it agreed to promote the Marbella destination in its network of travel agencies and “very prestigious magazines” during 2019 and that now in 2022 “we will resume again”, he stressed .
De Arce has valued the varied offer focused on tourists with high purchasing power offered by the city, which concentrates “the largest five-star and five-star Grand Luxury hotels in all of Andalusia, the largest concentration of golf courses in all of Europe” and “four Michelin stars”. In addition, highlighted “the quality of life” or “the climatological benefits” of the city.
This concentration of products and services has been collected in the ‘strategic tourism plan for Marbella’recently created between the City Council, the University of Malaga (UMA) and the collaboration of the private sector.
In this sense, the document includes the outstanding luxury hotel offer in Marbella, which brings together the “53.27% of the five-star places in the province of Malaga and 29.80% of the five-star Grand Luxury, which makes it the leading municipality”. Likewise, the city is home to 42% of the 4-key apartments on the western Costa del Sol, considered to be of the highest category, with a total of “851 beds”.
At golf segmentan activity that contributes to the deseasonalization of tourism, the town brings together “14 fields”, 13 academies, 3 stores related to this sport and 2 for equipment rental.
On the other hand, the plan highlights the existence of “exclusive areas such as Puerto Banus”, which “concentrate large international firms and a wide range of services related to luxury yachts, nightclubs, restaurants, high-end vehicle rentals, cosmetic surgery clinics or even real estate businesses”.
Thus, the text contemplates the existence of resources related to luxury, among which are “70 firms and 32 stores” only in Puerto Banúswhile there are 53 in the city as a whole, 12 dedicated to “luxury boats and yachts”, 20 high-end real estate standingamong others.