Tourism promotion budgets and tourism demand: the Andalusian case

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of Andalusia’s tourism promotion budgets and the efficiency of its campaigns from 2010 to 2022.

Design/methodology/approach

A mixed-methods approach is used. Tourism promotion budgets from 2010 to 2022 were measured as a supply indicator. Demand indicators (e.g. airport’s passenger arrivals, number of tourists and hotel occupancy rate) are analysed to measure tourism promotion budget impacts on them.

Findings

Tourism promotion budgets are a priority to stimulate tourism demand for Andalusia in times of uncertainly, and promotion campaigns are pivotal to attract and convert potential customers into actual tourists. Moreover, findings reveal that tourism promotion budgets had positive impacts on tourism demand. Whereas tourism promotion campaigns such as “Andalucía wants you back”, “Intensely”, Fitur, World Travel Market, ITB Berlin events and tourism advertising through digital channels have helped to improve tourism demand in Andalusia, ignoring the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the year 2020.

Originality/value

This study emphasizes how tourism promotion budgets and promotion campaigns must be constantly monitored by destination marketing organizations to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of assigned economic budgets and its return on investment.

1. Introduction

Tourism in Andalusia represents 13.3% of the gross domestic product, and this destination has broken a record in 2023 with 34 million tourists, that is, 4.3% more than in 2019 (IECA, 2024). This data shows that Andalusia is trendy and continues to be a highly demanded and established destination in European and US markets (McQuarrie, 2023). Florido-Benítez (2023a) found that English, German, French, Italian, Belgian and American tourists are the main markets of the Andalusian provinces and their hotel establishments. Notwithstanding, this recent study does not address the impact of tourism promotion budgets and the efficiency of tourism promotion campaigns in Andalusia territory.

Marketing strategies, promotion and communication campaigns developed by destination marketing organizations (DMOs) are required marketing tools to promote the tourism products and services of Andalusia. To ensure effective management of tourism promotion campaigns, DMOs need tools like key performance indicators (KPIs) that can measure digital and traditional marketing and promotion activities’ impacts on tourism development. The DMO of Andalusia needs to attract tourists from other countries to diversify the tourism demand (Florido-Benítez, 2023a). Andalusia and its eight provinces (Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga and Seville) are one of the 17 autonomous communities of Spain.

The cornerstone of tourism promotion at tourist destinations lies in the city (location), marketing management (understood as DMO), airports (accessibility), hotels (accommodation) and tourist attractions (entertainment). To combine these factors as a seamlessly integrated whole will determine the international success of the destination’s promotion (Abbas et al., 2023) because many people are still scared to travel due to the COVID-19 virus, especially by air (Jasrotia et al., 2023). Papatheodorou (2021) revealed that new direct airline connections may boost tourism in a destination by reducing monetary and time-related costs. It is very important to have a good air accessibility to tourist destinations provided by airline and airport operators because this is a competitive advantage against its main competitors (Vergori and Arima, 2022). Florido-Benítez and del Alcázar (2020) revealed that 75% of tourist arrivals to Spain were through airports. Andalusia is the third destination in Spain for foreign tourists’ favourite destinations, and British tourists are its main tourist market (La Moncloa, 2023). Therefore, tourists’ motivations need to be analysed by DMOs to design domestic and international promotion campaigns (Lau et al., 2023).

The financial commitment to the activity of destination promotion through DMO budgets (public purse allocations) has increased over the years. There is a growing need to create a high transparency with respect to DMO’s operations at promotional resources (Marine-Roig, 2019; Florido-Benítez, 2021). It is necessary to harmonize all promotional efforts to specific market clusters (Florido-Benítez, 2022). Tourism promotion has hitherto received inadequate attention in tourism and air transport literature, due to a lack of interoperability in the promotion and communication campaigns and joint marketing strategies. Damanik et al. (2023) noted that tourism products and promotions should be tailored to tourists’ preferences. As stated by Choe et al. (2023), DMOs and marketers should manage tourist destinations’ marketing strategies and promotion campaigns more effectively via KPIs, return on investment (ROI) and positive economic impacts in the regional-local territory. Hence, prior studies are limited in examining the effectiveness of tourism promotion campaigns and their subsequent effect on customer engagement behaviours (Abbasi et al., 2023), and tourism promotion budgets have not been analysed from tourism and destination perspectives.

Uner et al. (2022) noted that the impact of promotion campaigns through digital channels on tourists’ attitudes towards determining the selection of a destination has become increasingly important due to their relevance in attracting specific tourists’ segments. Marketing communication and promotion campaigns have helped to revitalize tourism demand at tourist destinations and hotels during the pandemic crisis (Vallverdu-Gordi and Marine-Roig, 2023).

Moreover, DMO’s promotion campaigns and marketing plans are designed to provide positive messages about the destination’s tourist offer and stimulate tourism demand in the countries where promotion campaigns are commercialized (Aktan et al., 2022). However, only a few have made efforts to integrate air transport impacts into tourism promotion campaigns at tourist destinations (Florido-Benítez, 2023b). This research tackles these knowledge gaps by providing discussions and justifications on how DMOs, hotels and airports should fortify their interaction and cooperation, to develop joint marketing strategies to stimulate tourist and passenger’s demand. In particular, the present study analyses the impact of Andalusia’s tourism promotion budgets and the efficiency of promotion campaigns from 2010 to 2022, to stimulate tourism demand in Andalusia. In addition, this paper proposes three research questions to tackle the main gaps related to this topic, and which were mentioned previously. RQ1.

What are the main tourists’ motivations to visit Andalusia?

RQ2.

What are the benefits obtained from Andalusia’s tourism promotion budgets?

RQ3.

Can tourism promotion help to improve Andalusia’s tourism demand?

A mixed-methods approach is used for the study. First, this paper measures tourism promotion budgets from 2010 to 2022 as a supply indicator. And second, demand indicators such as airport’s passenger arrivals, number of tourists, hotel occupancy rate, tourists’ motivations, average stay of tourists and overnight stays at hotels by international and Spanish international tourists are analysed to measure tourism promotion budget impacts on these seven demand indicators.

2. Literature review

2.1 Tourism promotion

The impact of tourism demand and supply fluctuation during the pandemic crisis has been devastating for the tourism and aviation industries, where tourism promotion has been used to return national and foreign tourist flows to tourist destinations by DMOs, airport operators, airlines, online travel agencies (OTAs) and hospitality firms. To simulate tourism demand at tourist destinations, travel and tourism organizations adapted and focused their marketing strategies and promotion campaigns through digital marketing, social media and virtual experiences in response to the crisis (Seshadri et al., 2023). For instance, the Japanese First Airlines offered a virtual travel experience, simulating vacations to Paris, Rome, Hawaii and New York using virtual reality and in-flight service to stimulate tourism demand. A destination marketing strategy includes destination positioning through promotion campaigns to attract the main issuing markets. Aiming to attract tourists, the tourism industry promotes and emphasizes the tourist offer in the main tourism markets (Florido-Benítez, 2022).

In this marketing context, market segmentation is a strategic tool with the purpose of grouping international tourists into distinct groups, improving destination attributes and developing effective marketing planning at the policy level (Nusair et al., 2022). Tourism promotion campaigns affect tourists’ travel decision-making (Soliman, 2021). Tourists need to feel that service providers at tourist destinations will cover their needs and preferences before booking their holidays (Saleh, 2023). For example, female tourists seek more information than males related to tourist destinations to enjoy their holidays (Wang et al., 2016).

Cultural activities are still the most important motivation for urban tourists (Smith et al., 2023). An examination of tourist’s motivation indicator to assess the destination’s tourism supply is also needed (Damanik et al., 2023). Thus, this paper includes tourist’s motivation indicator. Tourist’s motivation and behaviour indicators are major factors for competent authorities to define forms of communication with clients or for business support (Šimková and Holzner, 2014). Tourists’ preferences and behaviour differ across countries (Heriqbaldi et al., 2023), in fact, the motivations of Chinese tourists to travel are not the same than American tourists (Pang et al., 2022). Florido-Benítez (2022) argued that tourists’ motivations are determined by certain demographic and situational characteristics which plays in the decision-making process of purchasing tourism products and services offered by OTAs and DMOs.

In the past years, Andalusia’s DMO focused on the promotion of the Andalusian gastronomic heritage to encourage visitation and to reduce seasonality of Andalusian coastline (Dancausa et al., 2021). Thus, tourism promotion budget is very important for Andalusian tourist destinations, and it was included as a supply variable. Tourism campaigns have been documented as a well-recognized strategy to change consumer behaviour (Nimri et al., 2022).

2.2 Tourism promotion budgets

Tourism supply indicators can help to design and improve the effectiveness of tourism promotion campaigns in target markets. This would enable DMOs to direct their promotional efforts towards inducing more favourable campaigns based on differing segments’ responses. To achieve the research objective, the tourism promotion budgets of Andalusia were identified to ensure effective management of tourism promotion. For instance, tourism promotion through digital channels (e.g. websites, apps and social media) is more convincing than typical tour operators for foreign tourists (Devkota et al., 2023). DMOs, hotel establishments and other tourism and destination businesses should coordinate their promotion and marketing initiatives (Florido-Benítez, 2024) to ensure their effectiveness. The growing demand for tourists is related to tourism destination promotional activities (Chang and Chiang, 2022).

To maximize the potential of tourism promotion budgets, it is essential to identify the target market, develop promotional strategies based on knowledge of tourists’ motivations, use cost-effective tactics to reach potential tourists and provide effective information and communication materials. For this reason, it is important that tourist destinations have good economic budgets to achieve the objectives set out in the marketing plans. A tourist’s decision to visit a destination is related to push-and-pull motivations, tourist attractions and experiences (Omo-Obas and Anning-Dorson, 2022). Cruz-Ruiz et al. (2022) suggested that the Andalusian tourism sector needs to reinvent itself to maintain its leadership as one of the most visited territories in Spain, especially through tourism promotion campaigns in its main tourist issuing.

In addition, Benítez-Aurioles (2022) highlighted that marketing strategies and promotion campaigns developed by public and private organizations need to be improved to increase the hotel occupancy rate. In June 2020, the Spanish Government proposed a series of actions to boost the tourism sector in this territory with €4bn. One of these actions was to intensify efforts on marketing and promotional campaigns worldwide to attract domestic and international tourists and recover hotel activity during the pandemic crisis (La Moncloa, 2020). This innovative plan to boost the tourism sector is focused on five lines of action from 2020 to 2024, which are shown in Figure 1. For instance, tourism promotion campaigns based on air accessibility and hospitality sectors attract and convert potential customers into actual tourists (Devkota et al., 2023).

3. Methodology

A mixed-methods approach is used for the study. The integration of qualitative and quantitative methods provides a more complete understanding of a research problem than either approach alone (Truong et al., 2020). First, this research measures tourism promotion budgets from 2010 to 2022 as a supply indicator. And second, demand indicators such as airport’s passenger arrivals, number of tourists, hotel occupancy rate, tourists’ motivations, overnight stays of total tourists and overnight stays at hotels by international and Spanish national tourists are analysed to measure tourism promotion budget impacts on these seven demand indicators. International and national visitors’ data represent a stratified sample to compare different results. All these indicators have been selected in previous studies in the literature (Heriqbaldi et al., 2023; Florido-Benítez, 2023a, 2023c) and helped us to answer the three research questions and the main goal of this paper. Indeed, to measure the sustainability of the tourism industry at tourist destinations, it is required to examine the number of hotels and rooms, hotel occupancy rate and passenger and tourist arrival indicators (Aguirre et al., 2023; Gehlot and Singh, 2022).

The population under study was made up of national and international tourists because they represent the tourism demand of Andalusia. Unfortunately, Institute of Statistics and Cartography of Andalusia (IECA) and Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) organizations do not provide information about all Andalusian economic budgets spent on promotion campaigns, strategic plans and promotion actions in their main target markets. They only show specific campaigns that have had an important international impact on the digital media to increase project visibility, and this is a bias that emerged during the data collection as well as a benchmarking tourism promotion campaign analysis between Spanish regions to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of assigned economic budgets. However, we included the Spanish plan to boost the tourism industry focused on five lines of action (2020–2024) to cover this bias and support our results and conclusions.

From 2010 to 2022 was the period analysed in this study because the global economy began to recover in 2010 from the financial crisis of 2008. The selected timeframe influences the results of this research because the tourism industry has not stopped growing in Andalusia, excluding the pandemic period. Furthermore, this research tries to compare data from 2019 to 2020 with the aim of measuring the impact of promotion campaigns before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. To collect data, tourism and aviation scientists make use of a number of different data collection strategies. In this section, we show supply and demand data according to IECA (2023), INE (2023) and AENA (2023) organizations (secondary data). To count the number of passenger arrivals at Andalusian airports, data was collected from Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea, commonly known as AENA.

Moreover, tourism promotion budget data was taken directly from Junta de Andalucía (2023) and Hosteltur (2019); the rest of the indicators such as the number of tourists, hotel occupancy rate, tourists’ motivations, average stay of tourists and overnight stays at hotels by international and national tourists were collected from IECA (2023, 2024). These descriptive statistics were selected because they show annual fluctuations or even long-term trends that are subjected to different exogenous variables such as periods of economic boom, pandemics, crises and wars. Primary and secondary sources were collected from researchers and public and private organizations.

4. Analysis and results of research

4.1 Andalusia destination and its tourism promotion

Tourists’ motivations are considered an element of market segmentation by DMOs in Andalusia, where tourist preferences are encapsulated in touristic supply and activity by hotels, OTAs and DMOs. Each tourist destination promotes its products and services that best match tourists’ motivations (Çakar and Seyitoğlu, 2023). Figure 2 displays the overwhelming majority of tourists (84.7%) travel to Andalusia for holiday and leisure motivations in the period established, followed by visit family and friends (VFR) by 9.9%, others by 3.6% and work/business/congress and fairs by 1.8%. This data reveals that the Andalusian destination offers a wide range of tourism and leisure resources that are enjoyed by tourists during their holidays. Florido-Benítez (2023a) found that British, German and French tourists visit the Andalusia destination for holidays and leisure purposes. Andalusia is a region where sun and beach tourism predominate, and gastronomy is an added value to attract tourists (Eric et al., 2020). Indeed, hotels represented 58.2% of the total type of accommodation in Andalusia from 2010 to 2022, and most of them are localized on the coast of Andalusia (IECA, 2023, 2024) with a tourist supply based on holiday and leisure activities, that is, sun-and-beach tourism. This indicates that the grouping of the establishments is influenced by the hotels’ location. Regarding the average daily spending of tourists in Andalusia, it grew by 7.4% to €72.6 in 2022 in comparison with the year 2019 (IECA, 2023).

Then, the next step is to know how the tourism promotion budget impacts the tourism indicators set out in this paper. Figure 3 presents seven indicators of Andalusia destination (2010–2022), with the tourism promotion budget (the blue solid line) being the most important variable in this study. The remaining six constructs are shown in percentage year-on-years, due to the fact that tourism promotion budget is assigned each year by Andalusian and local governments, so we can analyse together the evolution of tourism promotion and the rest of variables for each year. Andalusia’s DMOs had to increase the tourism promotion budgets to stimulate tourism demand and attract more tourists during the years 2010, 2011 and 2012 due to the financial crisis of 2008. In 2011, the budget for promotion was around €81m. This will mark an important milestone in the tourism industry of Andalusia. This year, Andalusia saw an increase in five variables, especially overnight stays by international tourists (12.8%), passenger arrivals at airports in Andalusia (7.2%), total overnight stays (3.4%), hotel occupancy rate (2.9%) and number of tourists by 6%. These data are shown in Figure 3. These results suggest that DMOs’ tourism promotion do a fairly good job of perceiving the promotional needs of tourism-based businesses. On the contrary, the overnight stay by Spanish tourists was the only variable affected in negative terms with a −3.4%, possibly due to the Spanish economic depression, which began in the 2008s and ended in the 2014s (Perles-Ribes et al., 2017).

From 2013 to 2017, the budgets for tourism promotion were drastically reduced compared to previous years during these five years; the budgets for tourism promotion did not exceed €29m per year. In general, the six indicators did not fluctuate much during this period of time. Although UNWTO (2022) reported that the tourism and aviation industries had a steady progressive growth worldwide from 2013 to 2019. Andalusia received more than 32 million tourists in 2019, of which 12.4 million were foreign tourists (INE, 2020). DMOs must know their customer segments, motivations and demands for products and services that tourists require in the tourist destination, with the aim of generating products and services of quality. Cardenete et al. (2022) reported that the top destination of the national market in Spain is Andalusia, particularly in the summer, where 70% of tourism in this region is national, and the remaining 30% is international.

Nevertheless, from 2018 to 2022, the DMO of Andalusia broke the record in tourism promotion budgets with an average of €91m in this period and reached its peak in 2022 with €126m. The year 2018 was an excellent period in all terms but was not considerably better than previous years seen and analysed in terms of tourism promotion investment and ROI. Although the year 2022 has marked a major turning point in the Andalusian’s tourism promotion budget with its €126m, an economical budget adapted to the real pandemic crisis needs and an economic uncertainty associated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, findings have shown that the increase in the tourism promotion budget has improved overnight stays at hotels by international tourists, the number of passenger arrivals at Andalusian airports and the hotel occupancy rate compared to 2021, but these did not surpass the figures for 2019.

Regarding the number of tourist arrivals in 2022, this increased by 53.6% compared with the previous year and by −5.5% in comparison with 2019. Overall, Andalusian tourism promotion budgets and campaigns have helped to revitalize tourism demand between 2021 and 2022. This data must be analysed within a national and international context of pandemic crisis, war and economic uncertainty, all of them have directly affected the tourism and air transport industries. The DMO of Andalusia needs to better analyse its market segments, improve the tourism promotion campaigns around the world and focus greater attention on digital channels such as social media, major sporting events, advertising and publicity through smartphones. DMOs, hotels and airports must provide information, content, products and services anytime and anywhere through smartphones, supporting tourists on the move.

In 2020, the overnight stays at hotels by Spanish tourists fell by −55.7% in Andalusia, and the overnight stays at hotels by international tourists fell dramatically by −81.2% due to the COVID-19 effects. National tourism was less affected than international tourism in Andalusia and Spain. Hidalgo et al. (2022) found that the problem for the 2020 Spanish summer season was with the UK, which is the origin of almost 25% of Spain’s international tourists. Moreover, the hotel occupancy rate for the summer season represented an aggregate drop of 72% (42% residents and 87% non-residents). In 2020, the tourism industry in Spain was practically inactive, an unusual fact for DMOs, airport managers, tour operators and other businesses. Notwithstanding, in 2022, the hotel occupancy rate in Andalusia fell by −0.4% as compared to 2019. This decline was less severe thanks to international tourism. The behaviour of this in the last 13 years (2010–2022) shows us that it was on the increase, except for the pandemic period. Naidoo et al. (2010) suggested that the most effective promotion strategies are sales promotion, exhibitions and fairs, as well as advertising which managed to fend off the impact of the economic crisis.

In 2020, the sharp fall in passenger arrivals at Andalusia’s airports by −73% was quite worrying for airport and airline operators and DMOs. The analysis of the arrival of passengers at six Andalusian airports as the dependent variable of tourism promotion demonstrated the high dependency of Andalusia territory on air passenger and tourist arrivals as a result of air accessibility and connectivity in this territory. Whereas in 2022 Andalusia received 27.8 million passenger arrivals (14 million more than the previous year), it is close to the 31 million passenger arrivals reached in 2019 (AENA, 2023). It must be appreciated that tourism promotion budgets and campaigns have revitalized tourism demand in 2021 and 2022, without forgetting that in 2020 all indicators analysed were practically inactive. Incoming tourism as an export and an earner of foreign exchange for tourist destinations is of vital importance. For this reason, promotional budgets should be allocated for the greater effectiveness of tourism demand. All the data previously collected and analysed in this study should help mobilize tourism and aviation actors to face present and future challenges with joint marketing strategies in Andalusia to the reduce socio-economic impact of the pandemic crisis.

In this period of uncertainly and transition, tourism promotion campaigns were rather ineffective, possibly due to the health and safety restrictive protocols and measures by governments and airports. In 2020, tourism promotion budgets served to stimulate tourism demand after the COVID-19 restrictions, and most of the world’s countries opened their borders. Nonetheless, in 2021, Andalusia’s DMO promoted its eight provinces in eight European countries (Portugal, Ireland, the UK, The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Italy and France) through digital channels (social media, YouTube, TV, amongst many others), food demonstrations, shopping malls, sporting events, the World Travel Market and ITB Berlin. These eight source markets represent close to 40% of total stays in Andalusian hotel establishments and around 70% of overnight stays made exclusively by international travellers (Junta de Andalucía, 2021).

A promotion campaign named “Andalucía wants you back”, helped to encourage potential tourists to return to Andalusia once the mobility restrictions were overcome. This marketing strategy through traditional and digital channels empowered the brand image of Andalusia worldwide and helped to recover the tourism industry in this territory. In 2022, the Andalusian hotels had 50 million overnight stays, 166.5% more than last year, that is, 5.4 million Spanish overnight stays and 14.7 million international overnight stays more than in 2021. However, although the 50 million overnight stays are a good number, this figure is fewer than the 55 million overnight stays reached in 2019. It is clear from the findings that the pandemic had a significant impact on the aviation and hospitality industries and altered and disrupted tourism demand forces in Andalusian tourist destinations.

5. Conclusions

The goal of this research was to analyse the impact of Andalusia’s tourism promotion budgets and the efficiency of promotion campaigns, to stimulate tourism demand at Andalusian destination. In light of international crises, the DMO of Andalusia was forced to increase the tourism promotion budget with positive results.

These outcomes suggest that tourism promotion budgets had positive impacts on tourism demand, which improved exponentially in the years 2021 and 2022. Whereas tourism promotion campaigns such as “Andalucía wants you back”, “Intensely”, Fitur, World Travel Market, ITB Berlin events and tourism advertising through digital channels have helped to recover demand in Andalusia and its commercial and touristic activity, ignoring the effects of COVID-19 in the year 2020. Tourist destinations require advertising for the dissemination of their services and attractions, with the ultimate aim of seducing potential demand and generating economic income that improves the residents’ quality of life. Tourism promotion campaigns are beneficial for tourist destinations and DMOs in economic terms and tourism development. Decisions on advertising and promotional activities are very much at DMO’s discretion. It is up to DMOs to decide for themselves how much to spend on advertising and promoting their services and how to spend it.

Furthermore, findings of the current research show how tourists like to visit the Andalusia destination for holidays and leisure purposes, followed by VFR, others and work/business/congress and fairs preferences. These results respond to RQ1, which was to examine the main tourists’ motivations to visit Andalusia. The analysis of tourists’ motivations to visit Andalusia is useful for segmenting markets, developing customized tourism packages and designing marketing and promotional plans by DMOs and OTAs (Villamediana-Pedrosa et al., 2020).

The second major result of our research was that the tourism promotion budgets and tourism promotion campaigns by Andalusia have served to stimulate tourism demand after the COVID-19 pandemic, and RQ2 is answered. Marketing strategies through tourism promotion campaigns empowered the brand image of Andalusia worldwide and helped to recover the tourism industry in this territory. In 2022, the Andalusian hotels had 5.4 million Spanish overnight stays, and 14.7 million international overnight stays more than in 2021. Therefore, these results suggest the effectiveness of tourism campaigns in the main issuing markets and how these have helped the Andalusia destination restore the tourism industry after the coronavirus crisis. These findings also provide practical implications for DMOs and tourism companies, such as identifying what brought tourists to town to learn more about your destination’s feeder cities and partnering with famous people like Antonio Banderas or Peter Dinklage, who acted in Game of Thrones to supercharge marketing campaigns. The last tourism promotion campaign launched in 2023 by the DMO of Andalusia was called “Andalusian Crush”, and it is the motto of a groundbreaking campaign advertising tourism in Andalucía. Packed with cultural and historical references to local painters, writers and singers, the advertisement is voiced by Peter Dinklage, a series that happened to be filmed in Andalucía (see link: https://youtu.be/28-OppuIyjg).

It is also noteworthy that tourism promotion campaigns play an important part in publicizing tourist destinations to potential customers. For instance, DMOs, OTAs and stakeholders should develop marketing campaigns to reduce deseasonalization and improve the diversification of supply, with the aim of increasing demand in the Andalusian destination. On the contrary, DMOs and OTAs can promote tourists’ experiences on their official websites as a way to highlight the benefits of tours in the Andalusian territory. Thus, tourism destination marketers should pay greater attention to digital promotion campaigns to identify and boost tourists’ needs.

This study wanted to explore whether tourism promotion can help improve tourism demand at Andalusian destinations. Findings revealed that the average daily spending of tourists in Andalusia grew by 7.4% in 2022 in comparison with the year 2019. In addition, the increase in tourism promotion budgets in the period analysed has helped to stimulate tourism demand, particularly which were very beneficial to getting the tourism industry back on its feet in the years 2021 and 2022. Therefore, RQ3 is answered. Promotion campaigns provide substantial advantages in economic, competitiveness and tourism development terms. Although greater efforts are required to articulate joint marketing strategies and promotion campaigns by DMOs to increase the Andalusian hotel occupancy rate.

Finally, Andalusia’s DMO is the cornerstone of international marketing campaigns and the umbrella brand of its eight provinces. The positioning of each province and its tourist attractions needs to be jointly promoted around the world under the umbrella brand of Andalusia. For this reason, tourism promotion budgets are very important for tourist destinations because they help to finance their marketing activities globally and create new synergies of commercial relations in national and international terms. In general, the findings suggest some useful practical and theoretical implications. First, data analysis has shown that tourism promotion budgets and promotion campaigns must be constantly monitored by DMOs to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of assigned economic budgets, and their ROI. Second, destinations seeking to attract visitors should design promotion campaigns according to tourists’ motivations and their demographic and situational characteristics, which play an important role in their purchasing process. And third and last, there are limited studies that tackle tourism promotion budgets in the tourism and air transport context, possibly due to the lack of transparency in the management of public agencies. Considering our results, it is suggested that this study can be replicated by other academics and researchers in other Spanish regions and countries, with the aim of comparing the obtained results with those of new replicated studies.

The author would like to thank anonymous reviewers and editors for providing valuable suggestions and comments.

Figure 1

Spanish plan to boost the tourism industry focused on five lines of action (2020–2024)

Figure 2

Tourist’s motivation to visit the Andalusian destination from 2010 to 2022

Figure 3

Indicators analysed in the Andalusian destination (2010–2022)