Leire Bilbao, Director of Visit Benidorm: "This Autumn We Will Improve Last Year's Figures"

It may seem paradoxical, but a significant part of Benidorm's tourism sector has this week declared their summer holidays over or, rather, a period of 'active rest.' Following this, institutions like the Visit Benidorm Foundation begin the arduous and crucial work of 'mining' for bookings that will need to fill hotels, bars, restaurants, and businesses in the coming months.

Essentially, it is a long sprint that should carry through to the summer of 2025—distant for most, but already a reality for Leire Bilbao, director of the Visit Benidorm Foundation, and her entire team. As she acknowledges, it is now, in September, when "we practically start the tourist year" and when "the bulk of promotional actions with tour operators, agencies, and the general public begin with the aim of ensuring occupancy and profitability in the next high season, but also to consolidate off-season tourism."

In a conversation with TodoAlicante, Bilbao explains that "in Benidorm, we have had very good Septembers for years, and October and November also see high occupancy rates, especially during weekends and holidays because there are many things to do: theme parks are open, we have good weather and events like Pride, Halloween or the Festes Majors Patronals serve as attractions."

Benidorm is not the only destination starting this work now. Those responsible for planning and executing destination promotion are aware that their main rivals will not only do their best but will also look at successful initiatives from others (as they do themselves).

Therefore, Leire Bilbao reveals that the key to these promotional actions prepared by Visit Benidorm is "segmentation" to reach a very specific target audience. In this regard, she assures that segmentation focuses especially on autumn by developing actions aimed at senior tourism—those over 50 years old—and more specifically from cold northern European countries "because they have higher purchasing power and greater capacity to travel outside summer dates as they do not have young children to care for and because they are very active tourists seeking sports, gastronomic, cultural or hiking activities."

Actions will also be taken to promote Benidorm as a sports destination "for training because we have the infrastructure and mild climate for outdoor training in winter" and as a MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions) tourism destination. In fact, Bilbao explained that in August Visit Benidorm carried out actions in the UK to promote Pride as "the last Pride celebration of summer in Europe" with unique attractions such as "a parade on the beachfront."

This September kicks off with actions in Scotland, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, Poland, Germany, and Portugal. Promotional campaigns will also be conducted in the national market such as attending the Sea Otter festival in Girona or the Alicante Gastronómica fair.

In total, there will be nearly thirty actions by year-end aimed at retaining British tourists "whom we have fully recovered" and promoting the destination in emerging markets like Poland to consolidate off-season tourism.

Leire Bilbao forecasts that this autumn's outlook is "good." In fact, she predicts that "we will have better figures than last year." Regarding the work done since the beginning of this year until now, Visit Benidorm has driven "a hundred promotional actions in 23 countries; participated in 33 national and international fairs; conducted 13 familiarization trips or 'famtrips,' 14 press and influencer trips; made 14 presentations; and held 24 workshops with professionals."

According to data provided by the foundation itself, Benidorm's destination promotion on social media has reached 16.9 million users while events like Benidorm Fest—with 337 TV appearances and over 1,700 press publications—or the Cyclocross World Cup—with nearly a hundred mentions—stand out for their media impact.