At the World Travel Market fair, the proposal with which the Valencian Community plays to win is with the beach, the sun and the excellent temperature that the British envy so much. But there is more to offer to the traveller, and inland municipalities such as Alcoi have been fighting these days, wanting to present themselves as the perfect complement to the Valencian tourist offer.
They have not participated in the London fair since 2005, "but 15 years have passed and we have decided to return to see if it is interesting to start coming," explained Paola Pons, head of the municipality at this fair, where she explains to visitors the offer of the capital del Comtat at the same stand as Altea, El Campello or Elx, the one on the Costa Blanca.
He explains that they seek to position the interior because "it seems that the coast continues to be the resource that people most identify with when they talk about the Valencian Community, but the interior is beautiful and very worth visiting," he explains.
Alcoi has detected that, although its tourists are mainly national, a fluctuating 10-20% also have international travelers who "although they do not come specifically, they go to the coast to Torrevieja, Calpe, Altea or Benidorm and spend a day visiting us".
Another destination that seeks to gain a foothold among the British is the province of Castellón as a whole, which wields as an advantage the connection of Castellón airport with Dublin, which since October 30 has become the third route operated by Ryanair, joining those of London and Brussels. That Castellón is a complement to the offer of Valencia, for example, is fine, in the opinion of Virginia Martí, deputy for Tourism of the Castellón Provincial Council, who defends, instead, that “we have to fight because as a destination we have that attraction. When you go to a tourist destination, what you look at is to be well connected”, she points out.
In the battle for the supply of seats, Martí acknowledges that Castellón plays at a disadvantage with respect to the interests of the tour operators, since "they are interested in the volume of seats, at least they need more than 15,000 seats, but Peñíscola has 10,000 seats and that which is the most relevant destination in Castellón”, he adds.
That is why from the province they look for other alternatives to offer the traveler, among them the singularity of the territory and the landscape to exploit the cycling routes. “Cyclotourism is managing 150 million euros in Europe, and only in Spain it represents 5%. There is a niche there and that is the strategic line in which we have to work”, he advances.
