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Tourism
Continued from p14
passengers who previously had been to Gibraltar, yet as Gaggero emphasises, crucially, few have seen all of the sites - given accessibility and time limitations - and certainly not the newer attractions.
There are also growing numbers of day-trip coaches arriving from nearby Spanish coastal holiday areas, with people also wanting Rock tours. “We are almost victims of our success. The Upper Rock will not sustain more road transport; there is simply no more parking space in the Nature Reserve”, Gaggero emphasises.
A different perspective
Guerrero’s £1.2m GTB marketing campaign in 2018 has seen the on-line audience double, while other media targets UK flight catchment areas to focus on ‘Gibraltar Year of Culture’ – a combination of food, music, games, literary and sports events and new attractions - “encouraging a different perspective of the destination”. He explains: “People are looking for new experiences; events and things that will stimulate interest and add to their holiday.”
New and upgraded attractions include a
Skywalk (pictured p12) at the top of the Rock of Gibraltar, perched 340m above sea level - higher than London’s The Shard office block – that was opened in March with glass floor and balustrade panels providing views of three countries and two continents.
Another attraction described as “definitely not for the faint-hearted” is the Windsor Suspension Bridge over a 50-metre wide gorge. Opened in June 2016, it forms part of the Upper Rock ‘Thrill Seekers Trail’ that is “restoring, revitalizing and rebranding” the Nature Reserve. Nature trails with varying degrees of difficulty have been revamped and marked to encourage wider use of the nature reserve by independent walkers and ramblers.
At sea level, Gorham’s Cave, a UNESCO World Heritage site exploring over 120,000 years of cultural traditions and material culture of Neanderthal and early modern human populations, includes a viewing platform opened last year with an interpretation centre, plus boat and walking tours.
STR Global, an international benchmarking organisation, met local industry leaders in early October to consider tourism revenue, property
values and investment prospects as a means of “reducing the perception that Gibraltar’s leisure market is volatile/opaque and high risk” after STR received “requests for credible data on Gibraltar’s leisure and travel market”.
Tourism expenditure in 2017 was estimated at £252m, up by 19% year-on-year, and the sector overall is said to account for a fifth of the territory’s economy. “It’s a widely held view among politicians and business that tourism can make a bigger contribution”, points out Gaggero, “because there is so much more in Gibraltar to offer.
“With a new transport network, we can enfranchise sites and create new ones like the 33 miles of presently inaccessible tunnels within The Rock, many of which have been demilitarised; even the existing Great Siege Tunnels are not part of existing tour offers”.
Next summer Gibraltar hosts the week-long NatWest International Island Games for 2,500 athletes and officials from 24 member islands, plus there will be supporters. Hotels have voluntarily reserved significant space in the peak July period – HIE has said 100 of its 120 rooms can be taken, for example.
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