Lloret de Mar is a Mediterranean coastal town in Catalonia. One of the most popular holiday resorts on the Costa Brava, it is 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Girona and 75 kilometres (47 miles) from Barcelona. With a population of 39,000, it is the second largest town in the Selva comarca of Catalonia.
Lloret de Mar attracts summer visitors on package tours and is the European Spring Break destination. Its main beach (length: 1,630 m; width: 45 m; white sand) is one of the most popular Costa Brava beaches and is consistently awarded the Blue Flag for cleanliness. The town of Lloret de Mar covers 48.9 km (30.4 miles) has 9 km (6 mi) of coastline and 27 km (17 mi) of forest. The sports tourism destination (Destinació de Turisme Esportiu – DTE) certificate is a specialist seal awarded by the Catalan Tourism Agency (Agència Catalana de Turisme – ACT) with the goal of promoting tourism destinations equipped for various kinds of sports and which stand out for their offering of high quality resources and services for elite, professional and amateur sports people, along with tourists keen on sports activities. Lloret de Mar has been certified as a Sports Destination since 2006 thanks to a high quality and multidisciplinary sports offering concentrated in a single sports area in the town centre, surrounded by the hotel and shopping area and just 800 metres from the beach. In 2010 the destination received the Family Tourism Destination seal of the Government of Catalonia.
Every year, Lloret welcomes 12% of the tourists who visit Catalonia and over 40% of the tourists who visit the Costa Brava. Lloret de Mar is ranked the fifth largest sun and sand destination in Spain and the largest in Catalonia in terms of the number of hotel beds. 50% of its hotel accommodation offering is concentrated in hotels with three stars or more and, while 64% of the five-star and luxury hotel accommodation on the Costa Brava is located in the town. Lloret de Mar’s hotel offering in 2013 consisted of 30,000 hotel beds and over 120 establishments, of which 13,000 beds were in three-star hotels and 11,000 in four and five-star hotels.
Lloret de Mar has redefined itself in recent years as an urban beach tourist destination. “Urban beach” is a new coastal destination concept in which the natural attractions of sun and sand are complemented by a series of added values related to the area, such as its history, inhabitants, traditions, customs, cultural heritage and a wide-ranging offering in terms of leisure, tourism and services. Lloret de Mar drew up its first Strategic Tourism Plan in 2010, a plan that brought together a decade of work focused on joint initiatives between the public authorities and the private sector, which began in 2003 with the creation of the Lloret Turisme tourism promotion body. The plan is currently at the implementation stage with two key objectives: on the one hand, to opt for one of the Tourist Destination Reconversion Plans promoted by the Spanish government in partnership with the Government of Catalonia, designed to achieve the reconversion and comprehensive modernisation of mature destinations of international standing and potential; and, on the other hand, to consolidate its strategic products (urban beach, sports tourism and business tourism) as a strategy for reducing the seasonal nature of tourism. The first objective was achieved in March 2014 with the signing of the Pilot Plan Agreement for Lloret with the Government of Catalonia.
