The Biosphere Reserve Office of Lanzarote and the Tourism Board of the Island Council, together with the Society for Foreign Promotion of Lanzarote (SPEL), are working on the edition of a diving guide of Lanzarote with the aim of spreading the qualities of the island as an ideal destination for this practice. Both departments of the Island Council jointly prepare a guide that aims to combine the tourist promotion of this product with the protection of the underwater environment. Currently, Lanzarote has 22 of the 62 authorized diving centers that exist throughout the Canary Islands, which represents 35.4 percent of the total of the Archipelago.
The Island Council has simultaneously launched a promotional campaign whose purpose is to attract tourists interested in visiting the island to practice underwater activities. Within this campaign, the Tourism Board recently attended the 2011 edition of the Dive Travel Show (www.divetravelshow.com), one of the most important diving fairs in Spain and the world. The island was present at the fair with promotional material showing the best places in Lanzarote for diving.
Similarly, the Tourism Board and the Biosphere Reserve Office of Lanzarote have published 2,000 posters and 3,000 promotional brochures. The posters reflect, in an infographic, one of the most attractive diving areas in the Canary Islands, that of Playa Chica, in Puerto del Carmen. Meanwhile, the brochures summarize the complete content of the diving guide, which will be finalized in the summer of this year 2011.
In that same line of work, the Biosphere Reserve will launch the website [www.lanzaroteideal.com->www.lanzaroteideal.com], where you can find all the information of interest about underwater activities in Lanzarote.
Likewise, the Tourism Board is also preparing the expansion and improvement of the section dedicated to diving on its website ([www.turismolanzarote.com->www.turismolanzarote.com]), adding new content, with information, photos and videos. In these improvements, the Board works in coordination with Aetur.
The "weight" of sports tourism
The edition of the guide and promotional materials is included within the collaboration agreement signed between the Island Council of Lanzarote and the Ministry of Environment and Rural and Marine Affairs of the Government of Spain, financed by both institutions, and whose objective is the realization of environmental actions in the Biosphere Reserve of Lanzarote.
Regarding these actions to promote diving tourism, the Councilor for Tourism of the Island Council of Lanzarote, Carmen González, has explained that they are part of the market segmentation strategies in which the Board is working, within which sports tourism has a "specific weight". "We all know that Lanzarote meets exceptional conditions for practicing a wide variety of sports. Diving is one of them, and also one of those that involves the highest spending at the destination. Therefore, we seek to try to attract this type of tourism within the Lanzarote European Sports Destination seal," said the councilor.