‘Costa Blanca Pet Friendly’ is a new brand being launched by tourist authorities to help encourage tourists travelling with their pets to visit here. Tourism bosses on the Costa Blanca are in the early stages of designing a brand new tourism product focused on the pet friendly market, where holiday experiences will be tailored to visitors and their pets.
Experts say there has been a boom in this particular niche market and there is a great opportunity to develop specialised offers for pet friendly holidays.
To this end, the autonomous body of the Provincial Council has sent a questionnaire to each to municipality and various associations that may be interested in offering these specific proposals. More than twenty Alicante towns have shown interest in joining this initiative, which would have its own seal, ‘Costa Blanca Pet Friendly’ for those establishments or towns that have exclusive areas for pets such as dog friendly parks parks, hiking routes and natural spaces with access for dogs, dog beaches or accommodation that admits pets, as well as any other specific pet friendly services.
In Spain there are more than five million registered dogs spread over 4.5 million households, according to Dog Vivant, a company that provides tools and resources to help businesses and destinations that want to promote dog-friendly tourism. In the Valencian Community, the average number of dogs per household is higher than the national average, according to Hostertur. The Valencian Community is experiencing a boom in these pet friendly trips in recent years with more and more people considering that their dog is a member of the family.
People from Alicante, for example, invest an average of 54 euros per month in caring for their dogs and more and more decide to travel with their dogs instead of leaving them in kennels.
The president of the Diputación and the tourist organization, Carlos Mazón, points out that this specialized pet focused initiative “is gaining more strength every day and is a segment on which we want to focus attention to encourage this market through a stamp that allows visitors to and agencies locate services designed for their pets.”
Mazón highlighted the fact that there are municipalities that have already shown “their interest in promoting this new tourist product, with infrastructures and spaces equipped for pets, but without forgetting the attention to their owners, whom we will retain with new practices , both in inland destinations and on the beach”.
This project is included in ‘Our Plan Costa Blanca 2022’ which was unanimously approved a week ago. The tourism strategy is based on three fundamental axes developed by the Provincial Board, together with the tourism sector and the municipalities themselves: attendance, digitization and sustainability.
The wider tourism plan focuses on the complete reopening of tourist activity, especially air travel, nightlife, hospitality and traditional and popular festivals and, on the other, on the use of public resources, such as funds European Next Generation, in order to generate relevant projects and alliances.
Mazón specifies that “the current scenario is still changing and new challenges are presented to us, but we know that our province is prepared thanks to the conglomerate of professionals that make up the Costa Blanca tourism sector.” In addition, the president of the Provincial Tourist Board thanked the people, entities, professionals and opposition groups for their work in helping this plan go ahead, saying this is “a project that belongs to everyone and to which everyone has contributed to promote a consolidated destination in the international arena.”
Costa Blanca’s commitment in the short term focuses on increasing numbers and involving transport, accommodation and restaurant companies. Activities will focus on heritage, the protection of the environment and the accessibility and inclusion of vulnerable groups. In terms of digitization, the focus will be to change traditional tourism management models with new tools to promote the local economy.
José Mancebo, head of the tourism Patronato for the Costa Blanca, outlined some of the actions that authorities are currently planning, such as ‘Costa Blanca Pet Friendly’ tourism products, the return of La Vuelta Ciclista a España to the Alicante province next August, as well as strategic alliances for recovery, in collaboration with official organizations such as Turespaña or Turisme Comunitat Valenciana.
Mancebo also took stock of the operations carried out during 2021, which included 23 promotions, ten national and eight international fairs, six communication campaigns, 25 familiarisation trips and press trips.