New urban travelers: Social media defines the things to do in Madrid

Oct. 12, 2011 - PRLog -- Aimed squarely at urban travelers who want to uncover things to do in Madrid that connect with their individual interests, the travel organisation Enjoy Holidays has now launched a new portal covering the Spanish capital: Enjoy-Madrid.com.

“With all of our apartment portal sites, we have taken the approach that our guests want informative content written with a fun and unique voice that connects with their worldview”, explains Enjoy Holidays co-founder and director, Ralph Taal. “For our Enjoy Madrid launch, we used social media channels to research who is travelling, what they want to know, and how they want to explore a city to help us prepare the site’s content about things to do in Madrid.”

A key influence on the development of the new site was to appeal to the demographic that trendwatching.com defined earlier this year as “Citysumers”. Enjoy Holidays’ social media research – investigating forum questions about things to do in Madrid, monitoring twitter feeds, and collating comments and feedback from their Facebook page – revealed the urban traveler demographic is a significant client group for the short-stay travel market.

“Today’s urban traveller loves exploring and uncovering a city’s personality and unique character,” explains Taal, who has been operating Enjoy Apartments since 2003. “They want to know more urban things to do in Madrid, not just the list of cultural highlights from the travel guides.”

Research for the new site of Madrid apartments (http://enjoy-madrid.com/madrid-apartments-1.html] for vacation and business rentals, found:

* Madrid tourism increased by 6.7% in the past year, with July 2011 having the highest number of travellers ever recorded for the month with 728,722 tourists visiting the city

* Urban travelers are increasingly interested in the city landscape and want to know things to do in Madrid related to the city’s architecture and urban design

* A growing percentage of urban travelers’ online conversations are about dining out or finding specialty food products

* Growing maturation of the urban travel market means readers are comfortable with webpage content that appeals to gay audiences rather than preferring this content be placed on separate, niche sites

* Urban travelers are interested in visiting city green escapes, such as the Retiro Park and Madrid’s major urban greening and pedestrianisation project, Madrid Rio.

“We also know the majority of our readers and regular guests are well-educated women, aged 24 – 34 years, so much of our new content also speaks directly to them,” says Taal. “Over the coming months, we will be increasing our content offerings and suggestions of things to do in Madrid that further align with the new urban traveller: we have ebook neighborhood guides and a multimedia offering about the Madrid cuisine culture to give away as gift packs to early bookings, for example.”

In addition to the gift pack offers, [url=http://enjoy-madrid.com) is offering discounts to the urban travellers who make Madrid apartments bookings, and a 10% discount to Facebook users who post the new site details on their own Facebook wall.

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Enjoy Holidays offers shortstay apartments for rent in Barcelona, Curacao and Rotterdam for urban travelers, business visitors, and family and group bookings. Enjoy Madrid was launched on 7 October as the newest Enjoy Holidays travel site. The Enjoy Holidays office has been operating since 2003 and is based in Barcelona, Spain.