Blogging, an alternative way to promote Catalonia’s tourist attractions

Barcelona (ACN),- The Catalan Tourism Agency (ACT) is carrying out an initiative in which nine recognised tourism bloggers, with thousands of followers, go on tourism trips around certain regions of Catalonia from Wednesday May 16^th through till Saturday. These well-known tourist bloggers from the USA, Canada and United Kingdom, will explain their trip’s experiences through the ‘hashtag’ #catalunyaexperience, the web http://bloctrip.catalunya.com and the Facebook page http://www.facebook.catalunya.com/catalunyaexperience.

The bloggers are going to visit the Priorat wine region, Tarragona, the Costa Daurada and the Ebro Delta region, all from the Tarragona province. The route the ACT has planned different activities in each place. On the Costa Daurada and in the Ebro Delta region, the nine bloggers are going to taste wine and oil from Priorat, to visit the mussel beds at Sant Carles de la Ràpita, and will carry out traditional activities on the Ebro Delta such as the cultivation of rice or fishing. In Tarragona city the bloggers are going to scour its whole streets and participate in the ‘Tarraco Viva’ Roman Festival currently taking place in the city.

The ‘bloctrip’ participants are also going to discover the Modernism of Barcelona and the Astronomic Park of Montsec, to hike around the National Park of Aigüestortes and the Lake of Sant Maurici (in the Catalan Pyrenees), and to climb the human towers of Vilafranca del Penedès.

The nine participants are considered some of the most important bloggers in the tourism sector, according to ACT, and they are present on different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, YouTube and Flickr. These bloggers register more than 260,000 followers on Twitter and have almost two million visitors on their blogs.

Internet is essential

Nowadays, social networks are a key tool for marketing, promotion and commercialisation. In the case of the tourism sector case, travelers’ communities and blocs have a considerable impact and influence and become an important source of information. The ACT affirms that bloggers create opinion. This organism is aware that Internet is essential and, so the ‘bloctrip’ has been adapted to this style of tourism promotion.

More than one ‘bloctrip’

It is not the first ‘bloctrip’ that ACT has organised. In fact, this organism carried out another one three years ago with the participation of ten bloggers from United Kingdom, Holland, Spain, USA and France. In addition, a specific action for the Instagram network is currently being prepared by the ACT. It will take place in June and will consist of more than 30 million users who will share more than 1,000 million photos.