News: Valencia sees 10 consecutive years of tourism grow
Flights > News > # 347 (02/02/2005)
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According to data from the National Statistics Institute (NSI) for the first eleven months of the year, and a study carried out by the Valencia Tourism and Convention Bureau for December, the city of Valencia has been host to 1,129,318 tourists in 2004. This represents a 4.7% increase on the previous year.
The number of overnight stays rose to 2,176,947, a 3.9% increase on 2003. From 1994-2003, Valencia saw an accumulated increase of 156.6% in people visiting the city; a figure that is five times greater than the European average (based on a study by the European Cities Tourism Association, carried out in collaboration with the University of Vienna).
These statistics show that Valencia is the European city with the biggest growth in the tourism sector in the last ten years, contributing almost 3% to the growth of European urban tourism.
Valencia is a destination with an international appeal, and the tourist board's aim is to continue gaining ground until “Trademark Valencia” becomes one of the main reference points for tourism in the 21st century.
Major sectors experiencing growth include:
Conference tourism
It is estimated that there has been a 12% increase in conferences and meetings in 2004, the number of such meetings having risen to 677 compared to 605 in the previous year.
Valencia has become a conference capital, dominated by the city's two showpiece conference attractions - Lord Foster's Valencia Conference Centre, and the 1km long City of Arts and Sciences, the majority of which has been designed by Valencia's home town Architect Santiago Calatrava. Valencia's University has also acted as an important third conference venue for the city.
Cruise tourism
The Valencia Port Authority has registered more than 100 cruise stopovers in 2004, representing an approximate increase of 50%, compared to 2003.
The number of cruise passengers that have visited the city has risen to 98,000 – 69% more than in 2003 (58,000).
Cheap flights to Valencia
Much of the recent growth in tourism to Valencia has been led by the arrival of no frills airlines at the city's Manises airport.
HLX Express have been offering cheap flights to Valencia for a while, so it was no surprise to see that their parent company TUI chose Valencia as one of the cities to go to with their Thomsonfly UK operation. Since then, both Ryanair and Easyjet have followed TUI in, and offered cheap flights to Valencia from several of their bases.
Jet 2 will shortly be launching cheap flights from Manchester to Valencia, and there is no doubt that other European airlines will follow.
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Comment:
There are certainly many lessons which Valencia's Tourism and Convention Bureau can teach to UK cities who want to improve their offering.
There has always been much more to Spain than sunny costas, but whereas cities such as Madrid and Barc
