Tourist agencies of the Costa del Sol to market the Granada Geopark

Nineteen travel agencies based on the Costa del Sol will add the Geopark of Granada to the Alhambra and other tourist resources of our province that they have traditionally offered in the packages they sell to travellers from all over the world. Incoming agents from Malaga have had the opportunity to get to know 'in situ' the potential of the Geopark on a familiarisation trip organised from 18 to 20 June by the Provincial Tourist Board of the Granada Provincial Council and the Andalusian Association of Tourist Caves. They were able to explore the spectacular desert and badlands landscapes of the northern part of the province, take part in a wide range of rural and active tourism activities and sleep in cave hotels.

The aim of this promotional action, explains the provincial deputy for Tourism, Enrique Medina, "is to encourage the marketing of the Geopark of Granada, a very young tourist product, integrated since last year in the Global Network of Geoparks of Unesco, and which will be an engine of development and creation of wealth and employment for the 47 municipalities that comprise it". Furthermore, Medina points out, it is in line with the strategy of diversification, deseasonalisation and geographical decentralisation that the Patronato contemplates in all its actions: "We try to show the wide and varied resources that the province's counties have, many of them little known, and we encourage agencies and tour operators to integrate them into their packages and extend the stay of their clients in Granada".

The heads of the participating travel agencies, all of them with long experience and a considerable volume of customers and business, were very satisfied with their inspection and, above all, surprised by the quality and potential of the destination. "They have expressed their intention to quickly incorporate the Geopark of Granada into their travel catalogue, as it offers similar qualities to other competing locations such as Morocco or Cappadocia, but with the advantage of the proximity, services, safety and climate of southern Europe," the deputy of Tourism indicated.

The programme of the familiarisation trip has been designed by the Tourist Board so that the agents could get to know a good amount of territory and tourist products in a short time. The participants arrived on Friday afternoon and stayed in a cave hotel in Benalúa, from where they travelled for three days to enjoy numerous activities: 4x4 routes through the desert of Gorafe and around the Negratín reservoir, a balloon flight, enjoying the gastronomy in several cave wineries, horse riding and a guided tour of the monumental centre of Guadix.

In addition to showing the province to a select group of tour operators and agents, putting them in contact with local companies providing tourism services in the Geopark, in order to generate business links.

The Geopark of Granada comprises a vast area of more than 4,700 square kilometres, covering the regions of Guadix, Baza and Huéscar and part of the Montes, with more than 100.It has more than 100,000 inhabitants and 72 Sites of Geological Interest, seven of which are recognised as being of geological interest of international prestige.

It has one of the most spectacular and unique landscapes on the Iberian Peninsula: a semi-desert succession of tens of thousands of gullies and badlands surrounded by mountains and the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada.It is one of the few natural deserts in Europe, where you can enjoy a wide range of tourist and leisure activities in nature: hiking, cycling or ballooning among suggestive geological landscapes sculpted by erosion in the form of rocky outcrops, gorges, river canyons, clay ridges and a thousand other whimsical shapes.

The Geopark of Granada proposes a journey to the Quaternary and Prehistory, where you can discover extinct fauna, the first hominids that arrived in Europe and the environment in which they lived, visit an exceptional concentration of dolmens from 5.000 years ago, visit a Bronze Age settlement where the oldest mummified remains in the Iberian Peninsula were found, or learn how the Iberians buried their dead and what their monumental cemeteries were like.