According to its supporters, the America’s Cup, which weighed anchor last week in Barcelona, will bring in €1bn, create 19,000 jobs and, by the time the last sail is furled on 20 October, have attracted an extra 2.5 million visitors to the city. The ultimate sporting competition for the super-rich marks the latest attempt by the Spanish city to attract “quality rather than quantity” tourism.
“The people who follow the America’s Cup are people who love the sea and have plenty of disposable income,” said Mateu Hernández, the head of the public-private body Barcelona Tourism. “We are interested in these people. We need to improve the quality of those who visit.
But people confuse quality with wealth. What we want is people who come here to do something, whether it’s to visit museums or enjoy the architecture and the gastronomy.” Barcelona has been on the frontline of what has been described as an overtourism crisis in Spain, which last year received a record 85.
1 million international tourists, up 19% on 2022. Growing anger and frustration over the unchecked growth of tourism has prompted a number of protests in recent months on the mainland and in the Balearic Islands and the Canaries. To many local people, Hernández’s promise sounds unnervingly like the Monte Carlo model of pricing out all but the wealthiest visitors, with residents suffering the collateral damage.
Opponents of staging the America’s Cup in Barcelona say they do not see how people li.