From the 22nd to the 24th November, a Lebanese delegation of 2 council members and two technical staff of Saida and Zgharta-Edhen came to Barcelona for a study visit on tourism management and promotion in the frameworks of COHESIMED and TER BRAND projects both managed by MedCities and funded by Barcelona City Council. Unfortunately, the current COVID restrictions made it impossible to bring the full mission members composed of 8 people.

Both projects intend to support local authorities in positioning their territories (city centres or territories at large) as sustainable touristic destinations through communication and marketing strategies and actions. It also promotes a strategic and participatory thinking process of tourism management and reinforces their capacities to put in place public and private coordination structures for tourism management and promotion.

During the mission, the delegation had the opportunity to exchange with members of the direction of tourism of the Barcelona City Council, the public-private Turisme de Barcelona consortium and the Technical Tourism Office of the Provincial Council of Barcelona. With the first ones, they exchanged on policies and actions to promote economic, environmental and social sustainability of the touristic model of the destination. With the Consortium, they had the opportunity to go in-depth on understanding the concept of destination marketing organisation (DMO) and DMMO to the participants and the interrelation with the local authority to transfer acquired knowledge to the touristic stakeholders of the involved territories. Finally, they could understand the objectives and scope of a marketing strategy around a touristic region during the visit with the Provincial services. Therefore, the promotion could benefit other than the cities centres.

The mission finished with a touristic visit with a member of the touristic guides of Catalonia (AGUICAT) and the switching on of Barcelona’s Christmas lights event. Both activities are excellent examples of concrete actions to promote the cities and their territory.

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