Murcia’s Department of Tourism, Culture, Youth and Sports has organised a press trip to promote the Way of the Cross of Caravaca in the British newspaper ‘The Times’ as one of the best alternative pilgrimage routes for visitors from the United Kingdom and Ireland.
The promotion will be carried out in coordination with the UK public relations agency Lotus, inviting a journalist from the broadsheet to get to know the Region first-hand and walk some sections of the route, taking advantage of the celebration of the Jubilee Year 2024.
The press trip, which took place between Wednesday and Saturday, took the journalist to such iconic tourist attractions as the Cathedral and the Royal Casino of Murcia and the new Madina Mursiya visitor centre. She also travelled two sections of the Camino de Levante, one of 13 kilometres between Mula and Bullas and another of 17 kilometres that links Bullas with the city of Caravaca de la Cruz.
This promotion will ensure the publication of an article about the pilgrimage experience in various media of the ‘The Times’ group, considered the most important newspaper in the United Kingdom and with the largest circulation. ‘The Times’ sells 495,000 printed copies a day and has a reach of more than 15.5 million online readers.
The action is part of the Region’s promotional strategy in the United Kingdom, which has planned three press trips for this market in 2024, in addition to the one carried out in June, for ‘Euronews’, with a reach of 400 million homes in 160 countries around the world, through its different channels (television and web); and another one that will be carried out during the last four months of the year in collaboration with some of the main British newspapers.
Between January and July 2024, the United Kingdom was the largest source of international tourism to the Region, with 178,304 visitors, representing an increase of 10.7 percent compared to 2023 and a share of total foreign tourism of 28.9 percent, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
It was also the foreign source country that generated the greatest tourist expenditure in the Region, with 266.5 million euros, 30.8 percent of total international expenditure.
The director of the Institute of Tourism of the Region of Murcia, Juan Francisco Martínez, recalled that the Camino de la Cruz “is a comprehensive project in which the Community and the different municipalities of the Region collaborate, conceived as an axis to revitalise the entire Region, promoting active tourism, nature tourism and religious tourism.”
