Madrid has surpassed Barcelona as the most competitive city in tourism among the 22 main Spanish urban destinations analyzed in the UrbanTUR 2022 report carried out by the Alliance for Tourism Excellence, Exceltur.

According to this association in a statement, Barcelona has lost the first place it occupied in the two previous years (2013 and 2016). In the last comparison of 2016, Madrid occupied the second place.

Find out more

Leisure.

Madrid, capital of tourism: boom of luxury hotels in the center

  • Writing: ANA DEL BARRIO Madrid

Madrid, capital of tourism: boom of luxury hotels in the center

Municipal.

Barcelona will sanction with up to 3,000 euros tourist groups with more than 15 people or guides who use speaker

  • Writing: GERMÁN GONZÁLEZ Barcelona

Barcelona will sanction with up to 3,000 euros tourist groups with more than 15 people or guides who use speaker

In the report, it highlights that Madrid was a pioneer in its commitment to digital marketing, with the generation of multimedia content for tourism promotion, which places it "at the head of followers in social networks of its tourism promotion profiles, generating a brand image linked to its dynamism, vitality and lifestyle", reports Europa Press.

It also refers to the capital's commitment to "excellence and leadership in meeting tourism" through the management team of the Madrid Convention Bureau, driven by a "strong commitment and dynamism of the private sector and a notable investment commitment to product improvement by the hand of a powerful industry of high-level complementary services, that facilitates this positioning".

As reflected in this classification of tourist cities – which reveals and compares in each case the best local policies applied to tourism and orders the cities according to 64 indicators – Madrid and Barcelona are followed by Valencia, with third place, and San Sebastian, with fourth, reports Efe.

Sevilla (5th) and Palma de Mallorca (6th) have improved one position compared to six years ago, and Malaga, on the other hand, (7th) has lost two.

The following cities in the classification are Bilbao, Santiago de Compostela, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Valladolid, Gijón, Zaragoza, Santander, Granada, Salamanca, La Coruña, Alicante, Murcia, Burgos and León.

Of these cities, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Valladolid and Córdoba have advanced one position compared to the previous year, and A Coruña is the only one that has risen two positions.

As Exceltur clarifies in a statement, "not necessarily those who occupy the first positions are synonymous with optimal management and in the opposite direction, those who occupy the last positions are associated with poor management, since it is the average level between them that marks the different scales in the positions. "

Local Tourism Council

The mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, advanced this Tuesday after attending the presentation of the report that the next Governing Board of the city of this Thursday will approve the Local Tourism Council. It seeks, he said, "to improve co-governance and dialogue with the private sector."

For the mayor it is "good news" that Madrid is the first city in terms of urban tourism, "because Barcelona had usually surpassed it".

He believes that "the key is to have our own tourism model that starts from the search for excellence, quality and competitiveness as a destination". "We have a great city with great quality of life with very good public space and numerous attractions and we have focused efforts on long-haul tourism," he prescribed.

208 million for urban destinations

Tourism will launch this year an extraordinary call worth 208 million euros for the conservation of assets of cultural interest in urban destinations, said the Secretary of State for Tourism, Rosana Morillo.

Morillo has defended the search for balance in the coexistence between tourists and residents, a bet that has been the axis in the day held in Madrid within the framework of the presentation of the Urbantur report of the Exceltur alliance.

The report calls for decisive public action to prevent the "gentrification" of the centres of some of the most touristic cities.

According to The Trust Project criteria

Learn more

  • Tourism
  • Barcelona