Girona is a city more for hikers than for tourists. This was confirmed this morning by the professor at the University of Girona (UdG), Núria Galí, author of a study on tourism in the city.
The report reveals that only 26% of the visitors that the city receives end up spending the night in one of the tourist accommodations. The average stay is around three days so that, on average, they end up sleeping in the city for two nights.
The volume of overnight stays is higher in the amateur cyclist group, which for some time now has proliferated remarkably. According to the study, there are six days that they end up staying in the city.
And this much higher figure among the professional cyclist group, a segment that according to Galí has been consolidating since the late 1990s due to factors such as the climate, a powerful network of secondary roads and gastronomy. The professional cyclist makes average stays of about three months.
The study also analyzes other factors that reflect the enormous concentration of visitors in some specific streets of the Barri Vell. "Girona suffers from an extreme concentration in a small part of Girona, which is not the entire old town," says Galí.
The average number of tourist attractions visited is five. The Cathedral, the archaeological walk, the church of Sant Félix and two concrete sections of the wall are the areas with the most visits.
A phenomenon, that of homogenizing the visit, which is not exclusive to the city of Girona. According to the researcher, a member of the Research Group of the Multidisciplinary Tourism Research Laboratory of the UdG, this occurs in other Spanish cities such as Ávila, Segovia, Toledo, Santiago de Compostela and in other European cities such as Florence.
The professor also points out that the visit time to the city is rather short: about two and a quarter hours on average and the tourist's stay in the main attractions does not exceed ten minutes.
Galí explains that the consequence of these short visits, concentrated in very specific places in the urban fabric, imply some "side effects" such as "gentrification, dirt, noise, insecurity, loss of quality of offer and tourismophobia".
The researcher proposes that the tourist offer go beyond the limits of the Barri Vell border. "We must seek strategies for spatial and temporal deconcentration, dispersing, for example, the cultural and recreational offer," she explains.
