The Costa Brava’s TBEX Europe 2015

The world conference for travel bloggers generated 222 million digital media hits in two months and a 558,000 euro economic impact on Twitter

The Costa Brava’s TBEX Europe 2015 conference, promoted by the Catalan Tourism Board, the Costa Brava Girona Tourist Board and the Lloret Tourist Board, together with New Media Expo, brought together more than 700 bloggers from 39 countries in Lloret de Mar in May. These bloggers had a chance to explore Catalan destinations after the conference, resulting in a massive amount of online content. According to the monitoring report, over 32,164 tweets from 102 countries that accounted for 208 potential hits to reach over 11 million unique users were generated on Twitter from 11 March and 10 May. Despite the difficulty of measuring the economic impact of digital actions, the event’s economic impact on Twitter tops an estimated 558,000 euro. As for Facebook, 25 pages and profiles of the conference’s most active participants were analysed. These users published 168 posts that generated more than 4 million potential hits. About 12,466 photographs generated by 2,211 users were posted on Instagram, with over 10 million potential hits. As a result of the conference, the Catalan tourist brands have increased their presence in digital media worldwide, improved the image of the destinations and succeeded in encouraging third parties to publish quality online content.