Section 1: Tourism, Rural Tourism and Accommodation 1.3. Rural Accommodations in Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands 1.3.4. Spain

Cooperation in Marketing

Promotion is competence of regional and even provincial tourist boards, making considerable efforts, but without any coordination, frequently even within the same autonomous region. For the domestic market, private internet promotion platforms are more effective than the respective public sites; websites set up by regional or provincial rural tourism provider organisations vary considerably in quality and success.

Formal commercial sales channels are of reduced importance, they only work in some limited areas, a direct personal knowledge of the products always being their main success factor. Good Online booking systems exist, uptake is slow. In spite of a great number of assets and resources that could attract more visitors/tourists to the Spanish countryside, the following important bottlenecks exist for access to such a “holiday tourism” demand:

• Unexisting, insufficient, or badly managed local DTOs that can generate clear profiles and visibility in extra-regional markets
• Lack of cooperation between services at local level
• No coherent management of the tourism-relevant resources at destination level
• Lack of coordination and frequently working one against the other, of public authorities and structures acting on tourism or tourism-related resources in the same territory.

Qualification System for Accommodations

Rural Tourism (Professional and Marketing) Organizations