Ideas & Debate

Try managing tourism sites the Spanish way

Spain

Holiday makers stroll through the tourist zone south on Spain's Canary island of Tenerife on July 10, 2017. AFP PHOTO | DESIREE MARTIN

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of spending a relaxing week in the Catalan region of northeastern Spain and witnessed tourism on performance enhancing steroids.

Due to the borderless state of the European Union (EU) member countries, domestic tourism — where domestic is defined as EU citizenry — is sufficient to keep airlines and hotels fully booked in the peak summer period.

We flew out of Amsterdam into Barcelona’s El Prat Airport on a KLM Boeing 737-700 with a maximum passenger capacity of 142 passengers. Both flights to and from Barcelona were packed to the rafters, which should have been the first indicator of what to expect in the main tourist sites.

We hired a rental car from the airport together with a confounded “TomTom” gadget that is the most un-user friendly GPS tool to use, especially when one is used to just stopping on the side of the road to ask “njia ya kwenda Sitges ni gani?” (How do I get to Sitges?).

In the process of trying to figure out how the confounded GPS gadget worked, we inadvertently took the more expensive C32 highway, which is a toll road made up of a number of tunnels that were burrowed through mountains as we headed to our destination in Sitges.

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To pay for that glorious privilege which shaves off about 15 minutes of drive time, we paid the royal sum of €6.40 (Sh762) one-way! It took us about two days in Sitges to figure out that there was a more scenic and toll-free alternative highway C31, which forms the lip of a long cliff that snakes on a northeast to southwest trajectory.

On the one hand is a devil of a mountain that highway C32 burrows through, and on the other side is the deep blue Mediterranean Sea. Hairpin blind curves provide a stomach-churning experience, but everyone seems to maintain a sedate speed of 60 kilometres per hour with no halfwits trying to overtake unnecessarily.

Sitges is about 45 kilometres southwest of Barcelona and is a popular resort town, anecdotally famed as the gay capital of Europe.

In typical European fashion, the 17 beaches in the town are democratised, meaning that they are open to the public and are not hived off for the exclusive use of the Spanish elite as we tend to find along the Kenyan coastline.

A public road separates the beach from commercial and residential activity allowing everyone to enjoy the vast expanse of the warm Mediterranean.

Consequently, there are hundreds of coffee shops, restaurants and ice cream parlours that cater to the visitors and thousands of beach users some of whom, to my pseudo-puritanical horror, were in their topless glory (memo to self: always google the dress code of a beach before attempting to go there).

On one particularly hot afternoon, we drove further southwest to the small seaside town of Calafelle. After thinking long and hard about the pros and cons of Spanish cuisine, we defaulted to the road well travelled and stopped to eat at an Indian restaurant by the beach. We got to chat with the owner Deep, short for Deepak.

The hard working Indian actually lives in London and owns a restaurant there too.

However, he comes to Spain every summer to run his restaurant and keep an eye on his six apartments in the building above his eatery, which are always fully booked out to holiday users.

His aim is to buy all the apartments in the building and put up a hotel. I cast Deep a baleful side eye. He had all the makings of a Kenyan entrepreneur.

Later in the week, we made the mandatory tour of the Sagrada Familia cathedral, which is Barcelona’s top tourist attraction. Barcelona’s eminent son, Antonio Gaudi, whose architectural style is simply a work of art, designed the cathedral.

Construction began in 1882 and is expected to finally be complete by 2027. Visitors to the building, currently clocking three million per annum, have funded its 145 years of construction!

It was an eye opening trip on how well managed tourist attractions can sustain a region’s economy when the government provides sufficient infrastructure such as good roads, rail and airports that allow private sector investors to build the supporting dining and accommodation facilities for millions of annual visitors.

CAROL MUSYOKA is a former banker and currently a corporate governance specialist

[email protected]; Twitter: @carolmusyoka