A new study looks at tourists’ movements in Salou, Cambrils and La Pineda Throughout September and until 12 October, the PCT will be carrying out the field work for a pilot study analysing the movements of tourists staying at hotels in the central strip of the Costa Daurada (Salou, Cambrils and La Pineda). The study, like the one completed in July in Tarragona, will be conducted in conjunction with the local tourism boards. The study is groundbreaking in Europe for three reasons: its subject (i.e., tourists’ movements); its methodology (i.e., the space-time analysis of these movements); and its use of advanced technology, such as GPS, satellites and the Geographic Information System. It moreover takes a previously unexplored look at the geospatial behaviour patterns of the core tourist segment, namely, tourists who holiday in coastal resorts. Additionally, unlike other international studies, whose scopes have been limited to a specific theme or nature park or the historical centre of a given town, it examines tourists’ behaviour in an open area.

The operation is being carried out under the MCTUR Consortium’s Tracking programme in collaboration with the local tourism boards of Salou, Cambrils and Vila-seca and with the support of the Salou-Cambrils-La Pineda Hotel Association with a view to encouraging the collaboration of hotel establishments.

CONTENTS

A new study looks at tourists’ movements in coastal resorts

‘The landscape of geniuses’ joins the ACT’s Cultural Tourism Club

The e-Business prototype is tested by the private sector

The PCT launches its website

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The image shows how tourist movements recorded by GPS are transferred to a map for analysis. Each colour represents a different tourist.

No. 3 AUGUST 2010

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The ‘Plan for Increasing the Competitiveness of Tourism and Leisure in the Counties of Tarragona’ (MCTUR) programmes are funded through a four-year (2007-2010) ERDF Objective 1 grant to the region of Tarragona.

THE LANDSCAPE OF GENIUSES / MCTUR CONSORTIUM

Application for membership in the Catalan Tourism Agency’s Cultural Tourism Club This is one of the first actions to result from the talks between the directors of the ‘Landscape of geniuses’ project and representatives of the ACT.

Cultural facilities included in ‘The landscape of geniuses’.

WINE COUNTRY / MCTUR CONSORTIUM

Participation in the Cambrils wine tourism

The events on 4, 9 and 10 October will showcase wineries from Wine Country's official wine regions. Associació País del Vi [the Wine Country Association], in collaboration with the Cambrils Tourism Board and Reus Chamber of Commerce, will be sponsoring a trade show in October intended to promote wineries from the official wine regions DO Conca de Barberà, DO Montsant, DOQ Priorat, DO Tarragona and DO Terra Alta. The show will include professional events, to be held on 4 October and intended to serve as a nexus between local restaurateurs and wineries, as well as more leisure-oriented ones, scheduled to take place on 9 and 10 October, primarily at Parc del Pescador in Cambrils. Cambrils, which aims to raise awareness of the province’s wine offer among residents and tourists alike, will present itself as the ‘Gateway to Wine Country’, due to its geographical location, its importance in the tourism sector and its traditional seafaring and agricultural roots, which provide the foundation for its connection to the inland regions.

MARKETS / MCTUR CONSORTIUM

A new pilot study looks at spending

The field work is being carried out in Salou, Cambrils and La Pineda.

In August, the Markets programme, sponsored by the Consortium for Increasing Competitiveness in Tourism and Leisure in the Counties of Tarragona (MCTUR Consortium), rolled out a pilot operation to study the spending habits of tourists staying on the central strip of the Costa Daurada. To this end, a team of survey takers carried out the field work in Salou, Cambrils and La Pineda.

The surveys conducted for the pilot operation take a specific look, for the first time, at variables relating to what tourists spend both before and during their stay, thereby providing a wealth of detail on an aspect of great interest to both the destinations themselves and other tourism stakeholders.

The new operation is intended to supplement the surveys conducted by the Costa Daurada Tourism Observatory.

The Technical Office for the ‘Landscape of geniuses’ project is preparing to submit its application to join the Cultural Tourism Club of the Catalan Tourism Agency (ACT) when the registration period for 2011 opens in September.

‘The landscape of geniuses’ is a tourism project sponsored by the towns of Horta de Sant Joan, Mont-roig del Camp, Reus and El Vendrell in conjunction with the Tourism Board of the Provincial Government of Tarragona and Rovira i Virgili University (URV). The goal is to develop a tourism offer that capitalises on the region’s historical ties to luminaries such as Picasso, Miró, Gaudí or Pau Casals.

The Cultural Tourism Club is a programme run by Turisme de Catalunya to strengthen marketing through coordinated, joint promotion of cultural tourism by all stakeholder companies, bodies and organisations in the sector.

Members are listed in the Cultural Tourism Catalogue and Guide-Map and are eligible to participate in reconnaissance and press tours, as well as trade conferences, among other benefits. They can moreover make use of the overseas Promotion Centres.

This is one of the first collaborative efforts with the ACT, the result of meetings held between the

‘Landscape of geniuses’ project directors and Àngel Xifré, director of regional services for the Catalan Ministry of Innovation, Universities and Enterprise in Tarragona, and Patrick Torrent, deputy director of the Catalan Tourism Agency.

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The ‘Plan for Increasing the Competitiveness of Tourism and Leisure in the Counties of Tarragona’ (MCTUR) programmes are funded through a four-year (2007-2010) ERDF Objective 1 grant to the region of Tarragona.

E-BUSINESS / MCTUR CONSORTIUM

The prototype is being tested with help from the private sector A demo version of the e-Business system will be released in October. The new technology shows the average online price of tourist accommodation. The e-Business programme, in collaboration with the private sector, is currently testing the PCT’s new prototype, which consists of an online price search engine. The interactive module, which shows the retail prices of tourist accommodation from the main online booking and tour operator platforms, is useful for tourism establishment associations and, especially, SMEs from the sector. It is a technological tool offering

tourism companies from the Tarragona counties new possibilities for innovative stock management in accordance with demand. The e-Business system will allow companies to determine the average retail price for their location at any given time and enable com-parisons with other destinations. This will help companies make informed business decisions in spheres such as price management.

THINK TANK / MCTUR CONSORTIUM

The Awareness Indicator, ready

The indicator will be released in October, following completion of the technical testing.

The Think Tank programme has created an Awareness Indicator, to be released next October, upon completion of the PCT’s internal technical quality testing. The indicator will offer tourism agents information about awareness of their brand as compared to the competition and thus allow them to position themselves and make informed decisions. Awareness is understood as the degree of knowledge the market has of a given brand and consumers’ ability to identify it in different situations. Both brands and brand awareness, which can be measured for a product or even a destination, are perceived through marketing and communication actions. A destination exists in users’ minds in the form of the images they create. Consequently, destinations compete through the images they offer tourists before they decide to visit the region. Lack of awareness is a major problem for many destinations. The new indicator will enable its detection and allow individual destinations to apply the appropriate solutions.

MARKETS / MCTUR CONSORTIUM

A five-year cumulative database

For the last few months, the PCT has been processing the statistics collected by the Costa Daurada Tourism Observatory to create a cumulative database for the last five years.

The Markets programme will now begin to put this database to use, breaking down, studying and determining the relationships between the wealth of data and analysing the vast amount of information they offer about tourists to the Costa Daurada and Terres de l’Ebre regions.

The project staff will publish regular reports on different aspects of the demand in the counties of Tarragona. This will generate knowledge for the tourism sector based on the information obtained through the survey of tourism demand regularly conducted by the Costa Daurada Tourism Studies Foundation Observatory, which was founded in 2001.

Subscribe to the newsletter

People interested in receiving the newsletter, to be entitled Zoom Mercats, can send their subscription request to info@pct-turisme.cat.

The system implemented by the e-Business programme offers new technology for price management.

The database will include the microdata gathered by the Observatory.

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AGENDA 6 September The FOSS4G 2010 conference, devoted to open-source geospatial software and aimed at both the developers and users thereof, as well as representatives from companies, institutions and universities, will be held in Barcelona from 6 to 9 September. Officers from the PCT’s Tracking and SigTur/e-Destination programmes will attend the conference to learn about the latest results and news in the field.

http://2010.foss4g.org

28 September Salvador Anton Clavé, managing director of the PCT, will participate in the monthly ‘Bon dia Tarragona’ lecture series sponsored by the Tarragona Chamber of Commerce and geared towards business owners and professionals. His talk will analyse the current tourism season in the Tarragona counties and the outlook for the future.

The event will take place from 8:45 am to 10 am at the Chamber’s headquarters (Av. Pau Casals, 17, Tarragona).

PCT BRIEFS

An international seminar on wine tourism The international seminar ‘New opportunities and challenges in wine tourism’ will be held on 15 and 16 October. The seminar is intended to promote the dissemination and discussion of research results in the field, as well as to present cutting-edge research and international best practices to attendees. Targeting research units, companies and institutions dedicated to promoting wine tourism, the seminar will initially consist of two sessions. The first day's talks will be held at Rovira i Virgili University’s School of Tourism

and Leisure in Vila-seca, and the second day's at Castell del Vi in Falset. Aptalc sets up offices at the PCT The Catalan Association of Local Public Sector Tourism Professionals (Aptalc) will be headquartered in the PCT’s business incubator as of September. The PCT’s executive director, Sergi de Lamo, and the president of Aptalc, Joaquim Queralt, have signed an agreement for the association’s installation at the PCT. The signing was also attended by Salvador Anton, managing director of the PCT, and Eva de Gregorio, from

the Aptalc board of directors.

The association, founded in 2004, has some 200 members hailing from almost all the Catalan counties.

KNOWLEDGE

The Science and Technology Park for Tourism and Leisure launches its website The website will serve as a one-stop-shop for information about all its activities.

At the same time, it will facilitate communication between the PCT and tourism agents and other parties with ties to or interest in the sector. It will moreover offer a convenient way to stay on top of some of the most innovative aspects of contemporary tourism.

Science and Technology Park for Tourism and Leisure – Rovira i Virgili University - Vila-seca Campus +34 977 394 871 info@pct-turisme.cat

This August, the PCT is set to unveil the final design for its website, a new communication tool intended to provide regular and detailed information about the science park’s activities. The new channel will publicise the technological applications implemented at the PCT, the innovative knowledge generated there and the products that it develops.

The PCT’s website can be found at www.pct-turisme.cat

TRANSFER Presentation of the ‘Cruise Product Handbook’ The Science and Technology Park for Tourism and Leisure’s Technology Transfer Unit presented the Cruise Product Handbook for the city of Tarragona in mid-July. The handbook was created in collaboration with the Port of Tarragona. The project was carried out within the framework of the actions set out under the Competitiveness Plan for Roman Tarraco.

Within the same sphere of action, the Unit is also currently preparing a Generic Product Handbook, commissioned by the Plan's management.