THE END

Hi Bloggers!!

This is our last post in this blog.

It was an amazing experience and we are so proud of showing you a lot of interesting information about the hotels in Catalonia.

We hope that you like it and that you have fun with it.

See you soon!!!

Sarah, Valeria and Mireia

Easter holidays will be affected by the crisis

The opening of temporary hotels will be like in 2004, according to ESADE. A great number of hotels are usually open during this week. However, this year will be reduced a lot due to the dates and the taxes. When the Easter holidays are in April, there are more tourists and the travel agencies can sell their services easier. When it is in April, it helps to reduce the big problem of seasonality, as Francesc Valls said.

The increase of costs and taxes has also affected this Easter holidays. In order to reduce the costs, the tourists are changing their way of travelling: they travel for less days and try not to spend a lot of money. For example, they will bring their own food, instead of paying a restaurant each day. They also try to reduce the cost of the transport. They go to places, where some friends or familiars live, to avoid the cost of the accommodation.

In Ester holidays we can find some different kind of tourism: white or snow tourism, which this week will have luck because of the amount of snow that has fallen this year; green tourism, which is located in rural places and islands, which have a lot of good offers; city breaks, which in Spain will highlighted Barcelona and Madrid and out Spain, Paris, Roma, Amsterdam and Istanbul, and finally religious tourism, which attract a lot of tourists during this week, above all in Andalucia.

We are in an intermediate period between an update in the tourism model, changing from the traditional one to a new one, where culture, business and thematic parks will highlight.

As we can see, the crisis has affected the tourism sector. A 64% Spanish people will prefer traveling in Spain this year in order to reduce their budget, meanwhile a 36% will go abroad.

It is also true that in the last years, people are used to buy their holidays in the last moment, waiting for the last offers. So..we have to wait and hope that this situation improve.

What do you think about that? Is it a shame to waste this opportunity of increasing the tourism due to the month?

Thankss!!!

Touristic Marketing

Catalonia is the only autonomous community which had adopted the Touristic tax.

The collection of the new tax as they said it's created to finance the promotion policies, preservation and development of the infrastructure and tourism.

With this rate, Catalonia has one of the most powerful budgets to invest in marketing for tourism in all Spain.

Before these new global trends, in which new destinations are aggressively promoted, the new tourism marketing plan provides that Catalan marketing gives an increasing importance of online marketing. Currently, the 5% of our budget goes to online promotion, but is expected to increase the 70% in three years.

The airline Vueling, soon will add seven new routes from Barcelona to different airports in Germany, which are Dresden, Dusseldorf, Dortmunt, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Nuremberg.

At the ITB fair in Berlin, Catalonia has confirmed the positive development of German market by 2013, as a consequence of the growth of tourist arrivals. About 40 Catalan companies and organizations participate in the fair to showcase their innovations, focused mainly seasonally season.

How will you recommend investing the promotion budget to develop new markets and explore new niches?

Xavier Espasa, in Catalonia stand at the ITB Berlin.

CRISIS IN NH HOTELS!!

HI BLOGGERS!

Currently we read bad news about NH Hotel and the hotels that they have in our city, Barcelona.

As all of you know, nowadays there is a big crisis that affect all the entire world. Because of this, the hotel chain NH Hotel will make an ERE ( Expediente de Regualción de Empleo), this means that they will dismiss 646 employees of 38 of those hotels what supose a 11.7% of the spanish citizens.

With this measure the hotel chain will earn 17 million of euros with the externalization of the housekeeping department, that as all of you know is an essential part of a hotel, and the dismissal of workers.

The unions have rejected the proposal because it will supose a discompose in the unit of the company.

This hotel chain have 19000 employees in their 400 hotels over 26 countries, 176 of this hotels take place in Spain and approximately 5500 of this employees work in our country, with this measure only affect a 3.4% of the template of the group.

What do you think about it?

Is it a good measure to earn money?

What is going to happens with this employees??

We are waiting for your comments!!

A New Distinctive in Catalan Gastronomy

The Departament d’Empresa i Ocupació de la Direcció General de Turisme of Catalonia has introduced a official gastronomic distinctive in Catalonia.

There are some technical requirements that the little hotels (with less than 50 rooms) have to do if they want to take part of this new project. It has been done exclusively for small establishments. Indeed they will have to guarantee the identity and the authenticity of the product. All of their dishes must be Catalan and made with proximity products, Denominació d’Origen Protegits and with a Protect Geographic Identity.

It is formed by a good number of small hotels and hostels that offer accommodation and a high quality gastronomy, characteristics from Catalonia. They use to be establishments really closed to the Land.

This new project is a strategy to easier identify these establishments making a singular distinctive of quality and it will be a new touristic offer.

The Direcció General de Turisme has worked hard in this new project to give support to the interior tourism, which have two entities of reference: Associació de fondes de Catalunya and the Institut Català de la Cuina.

We think that these kinds of strategies make the tourism of Catalonia more specialized and it can become popular for its specialties. It will encourage some establishments to dedicate more effort in enhancing their quality, especially in gastronomy in this case. We hope that this strategy has a good impact in our tourism.

What do you think about that? Do you think it would be successful?

See you soon!

CondoHotels

Catalonia will regulate the Condohotels to attract new investment; these establishments are halfway between the hotels and residential areas.

Some counties like the Caribbean because of its proximity to the United Sates market have developed a legal basis in order to provide legal certainty to foreign investors interested in the new models known as mixed housing Condohotels.

U.S. and Florida are the areas particularly in developing pioneering resorts that combine hotel accommodation with residential.

With this new law, an investor acquires a hotel suite, an apartment or a villa resort (located within a resort catering).

This company can be, for example, a hotel chain or company that promotes itself the resort. Its mission will be to put in the market this kind of accommodation through reservation centers, tour operators, etc.

This operating system guarantees the owner an income for the investment.

If you want to know more about this type of accomodation, you can look into the next web page;

Is an example of Condohotels in the Caribeean:

http://www.condohotelsplayadelcarmen.com.mx/

Are the Hotels in Barcelona expanding their buildings?

A new acquisition for Diagonal Hotels!!!

The world of hotels in Barcelona every day changes, for example, a few months ago one of the largest hotel chains in Catalunya, Diagonal Hotels has added to its portfolio a new hotel in Barcelona under lease. This hotel is known as NH Condor, hotel chain NH Hotels, located in uptown and downtown.

NH Hotels did not renew their lease in 2012 and as reported Hosteltur, a wonderful tourist website where there are all the news related to this sector, it is disassociated chain of five stores in the first half. The hotel now called Hotels Alberta and Diagonal Hotels with the family that owns the property have invested EUR 1.2 million in renovation of the property. Before the renovation this hotel will be a 3 or 4 stars hotel.

This company expects that along the 2013 increase in EUR 2 million, that increase in turnover of the group, change their benefits from EUR seven million to nine million.

This hotel will have 76 renovating rooms. THis contains diferent atractives as for example a library with a chimeney, two meeting rooms and a terrace with a pool at the top of the building.

With this new opening Diagonal Hotels, that have already two other building Hotel alexandra and hotel Augusta Valles, continues their process of expanding.

What do you think about it?

Do you think that in this time of crisis the poor hotel chain sell their buildings with a less price than it would be?

We want to know your comments!

See you soon!

Catalan’s government apply for the management of 7 “paradores”

In December 2012, the Spanish government wanted to close during a period of 5 months 6 between 7 paradores in Catalonia: Seu d’Urgell, Cardona, Vielha, Artíes, Aiguablava and Vic-Sau. The association of Paradores refused closing completely these special hotels and wanted to reduce the number of workers that was going to be hired.

The Generalitat with the majors of the villages, where are located the paradores, were negotiating with the central government to pass the ownership of them. The Catalans said that thanks to the proximity, it would be easier to assure and consolidate the viability of these kind of hotels.

The measures that Madrid imposed weren’t economically justified and will clearly affect the employment and the touristic activity of the regions. It is true that most of the paradores in Spain have deficit. However, that is not the case of Catalan paradores, which have a positive economic balance. 

Fortunately, they have reduced the closing of paradores from 5 months to 40 days of holidays. If they had made them close 5 months, it would have affected very hard in the economic activity of the village, above all the weekend tourism and the business tourism. Finally, only 350 people were hired, meanwhile the government wanted to hire 644.

Even though Madrid didn’t accept the transfer of the paradores, the General Director of Turisme de la Generalitat de Catalunya, Marian Muro, insists on the importance and need of being able to manage them from Catalonia and she assure that they will continue fighting to get their ownership.

Why does the central government want to close the catalan paradores if they are profitable? If they don't want them, why don't they give their ownership to the catalan government? Do you think it is a good idea to close them 40 days or it is better 5 monhts?