The average occupancy during the year is 60% and only at specific times is it full in the 514 places available.
The hotel supply in the municipality is stagnant due to the lack of incentives for investors in the sector, the director of the Tourism Institute of the Region of Murcia (Itrem), Juan Francisco Martínez, explains to LA VERDAD. The average occupancy of the hotels during the year is 60% and only at specific times, such as Easter, is it fully booked in the 514 places in the municipality. According to Martínez, it is necessary for the annual average to reach 80% to attract these investors, because until then the business will not begin to be profitable for them.
It is essential that Lorca enter the congress tourism circuit when the construction of the fair and exhibition center of Santa Quiteria is completed and the Ifelor fair institution is established, says Martínez. More top-level sports competitions should also be scheduled, such as the Tierras Altas rally, which attracts fans from all over the country and manages to fill the hotels in the region in each edition. According to Martínez, the city must have cultural, sporting or business tourism-related events every weekend; “That is the goal to fill the hotels.”
The deputy mayor and councilor for Tourism, Francisco Morales, explained yesterday that the recent celebration of Holy Week, with all the accommodations in the city full and directing tourists to neighboring cities, shows that it is necessary to increase the number of places available .
An establishment with 36 rooms has been projected for years in the historic center but has not yet been built
Public-private collaboration
To achieve this, it is committed to public-private collaboration and to attracting investors encouraged by municipal and regional plans to recover the historic center, where the construction of a hotel has been planned for several years. Its owners, the Piernas brothers, who are also in charge of the Hotel Jardines de Lorca, plan to build it in the Casa del León, near the Town Hall and the future Palace of Justice. Some 36 double rooms are planned, although the promoters are not in a hurry to start the works, Joaquín Piernas admits to THE TRUTH. The pandemic “has reduced the financial resources and also the illusion” to start up the new establishment, which now “is not essential.”
The director of Itrem believes, for his part, that the historic center of the city has enough potential to house several ’boutique’ establishments when its recovery begins, something in which the deputy mayor also agrees, stating that Lorca not only requires accommodation places in the historic center, but also in the inland districts and on the coast.
#Lorcas #hotel #offer #stagnates #due #lack #congresses #major #sporting #events