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Date Published: 28/09/2022

ARCHIVED - Jumilla attractions exceed pre-pandemic tourist visitor figures

ARCHIVED ARTICLE

More than 24,000 people visited the Region of Murcia town's museums, castle and other landmarks between January and August 2022

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Jumilla attractions exceed pre-pandemic tourist visitor figures

To mark World Tourism Day (September 27), Jumilla Town Hall has released its figures for the first eight months of the year, and they make for promising reading suggesting the sector is well on its way to recovery having surpassed pre-pandemic data in terms of visitors to the town.

According to Jumilla's Department of Tourism, between January and August 2022, a total of 24,118 people visited the municipality's museums, castle, Casa del Artesano, Tourist Office and Town Hall, almost 10% up on the 22,912 visits during the same period in 2019, prior the Covid health crisis.

Jumilla Wine Museum has been particularly well received and in its first quarter of opening welcomed 2,146 visitors. The museum opened in May, and prior to the offical inauguration, was promoted at the International Tourism Fair (FITUR) held in Madrid in January.

Of the rest of the town's tourist attractions, the increase in visitors to the Casa del Artesano is also noteworthy, with the number of visitors doubling 2019 figures.

Similarly, guided tours organised by the Department of Tourism – of which there are around 50 a year – continue to be well attended, and have also recovered in number and demand from tourists, surpassing pre-pandemic numbers, according to the Town Hall.

Jumilla and its tourist attractions take part in many different promotional campaigns, both in the regional and national media, and in neighbouring autonomous communities throughout the year, and it appears to have reaped rewards.

"To give some examples, this year, Easter has been promoted on billboards in high traffic areas of Murcia, Alicante and Albacete and the campaign 'Taste, Breathe, Feel' has been seen on advertising panels in the underground of Madrid and Barcelona," explained María Quílez.

"Likewise, the Wine Museum has made its presence known in all the rooms of the tourist paradors in Spain through the official magazine for these accommodations," she added.

The Wine Museum features in the Enclaves TV programme, a Town Hall initiative, which has been filmed in Jumilla in recent weeks and will be available on Amazon Prime and other digital platforms at the end of November.

Jumilla has also put itself on the map through various advertising campaigns on social networks, in particular Facebook which had a reach of more than 177,000 people in the first eight months of 2022, with 143,000 interactions.

And this year saw the launch of two new virtual tourist information points in the municipality, next to the Vico Theatre and in the Plaza del Rollo, on the façade of the Tourist Office. These new interactive points are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and are "intended to improve the experience of visitors to Jumilla".

In addition, the official tourist office website has been redesigned to make it more functional and simpler to use, and 6,000 copies of three new tourist brochures have been published: one on museums and monuments; another on hiking routes; and a third on fiestas and traditions.

For more local news, events and visiting information go to the home page of Jumilla Today

Image: Ayuntamiento de Jumilla

Address

Plaza del Rollo, 1 30520 JUMILLA

Tel: 968 780 237

Oficina de Turismo Jumilla

The tourist office in the centre of Jumilla is easily found by driving straight into the centre of the town along the Avenida de Murcia and following the signposts. The tourist office is alongside the Parque de Don Albano Martínez Molina, where there are a number of parking spaces.

Jumilla, in the north of the Region of Murcia, has become internationally famous over recent decades due to the quality of the wines produced in the municipality, and wine tourism has begun to attract visitors from other parts of Spain and the rest of Europe.

The tourist office is happy to provide a range of maps and leaflets showing the different bodegas which can be visited within the municipality. Some of these form part of the Rutas del Vino de Jumilla, the Jumilla wine route, and can either be visited as a guided tour or sell their produce directly to the public.(see feed below for more details)

However, the town and the surrounding countryside have plenty of other attractions for visitors, and the popularity of Jumilla wines is leading more and more people to discover other facets of the tenth largest municipality in Spain.

Jumilla Tourist Office

These include the spectacular countryside and birdlife in the Sierra del Carche, the historic remains which range from cave paintings and a Roman mausoleum to the castle, the Iglesia de Santiago, the Town Hall and the Teatro Vico, and the gastronomy: rich stews are accompanied not only by the wines of the area but also by Jumilla pears, which also enjoy Denomination of Origin status.

Tourism in Jumilla is not as seasonal as it is in the coastal areas of the Region of Murcia, but the town is at its liveliest during the fiestas in Holy Week and the August Fair, which incorporates the grape harvest celebrations and the Moors and Christians parades.

The Altiplano of the Region of Murcia, which consists of the municipalities of Jumilla and Yecla, is only just over an hour by car from the Mar Menor, Cartagena, Mazarrón, Torrevieja and Alicante, and anyone wishing to visit real inland Spain and world-class wineries is advised to include Jumilla in their schedule.