The main Tourist Office of the Valencian Community, Hosbeclaunched a pioneering and preventive initiative to fight the tourism phobia or, what amounts to the same thing, acts of vandalism and protests against tourists. The initiative has as its central element the video I am also a touristwhich illustrates this information. And he has the collaboration of Tourism in the Valencian Community (Generalitat) and Costa Blanca Tourist Office (Alicante Provincial Council). Tourism generates 4 billion euros in taxes and this also assumes 16% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the Valencian Community.
The initiative began to coincide with the moment when Valencian left tries to relaunch tourist taxwhich the new government of Carlos Mazón has cancelled, as demanded by the entire tourism sector.
Video against tourism phobia
He video which is the central element of this initiative and which illustrates this information, begins with an eloquent “when I welcome you with open arms, I am you too”. It shows images of neighbors explaining to a tourist how to get to a street that he cannot find in a Valencian municipality. And it concludes with the message: “Because we both like to discover, to know, to travel: I am also a tourist.”
Additionally, it includes images from different locations in the Valencian Communitythus adding to its fundamental mission that of showing the attractions of this territory. Thus, it encourages reception, kindness and solidarity and places the resident in the place where he has been seen on other occasions: that of the tourist.
A problem from other territories
Although the Valencian Community does not have a problem with tourism phobia, as the Valencian Minister of Tourism stated on Friday Nuria MontesIt is true that this phenomenon is felt in other territories.
Thus, on August 26, the Association of Distribution Companies (ADED) of food, beverage and cleaning products attacked the tourist-phobic behavior and the humiliating treatment received during the demonstration against mass tourism in Majorca.
On the same day, the inhabitants of the Parish of Oh HioIn Cangas, Galicia, they blocked traffic on the road that leads to the beaches of El Morrazo, to protest against the tourist overcrowding. Exactly the same thing that the inhabitants of Alcudia, in Majorca, had done a few days before, also for the same reason.
The link between residents and visitors
The objective of I am also a tourist is it that of to raise awareness among visitors and locals of the “powerful and positive” link between the twoas Nuria Montes explains. The councilor attributed the open debate on this phobia of tourism to “xenophobic and classist positions.”
Nuria Montes also said that those who want to “blame and criminalize tourism” for the problems that exist as a society “only want to look for a solution.” scapegoat of their own deficiencies.
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