Spain Tourism Campaign Turns to Bilbao and Santiago to Attract US Travellers

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The marketing strategy for tourism in Spain uses Bilbao and Santiago as key cities to market the tourist destination to the Americans through northern Spain. This collaboration integrates destination marketing with the United Airlines flights that fly out of the region of New York. However, this approach not only seeks to create awareness but also provide tourists with reasons to book, stay, and visit other destinations near their chosen destination. At the same time, increased interest from the Americans is creating an opportunity for the strategy to succeed. Turespaña and its airline partner will have to monitor bookings and spending patterns to gauge its success.

Spain is looking beyond its best-known gateways

Spain’s tourism agency, Turespaña, and United Airlines have signed two marketing agreements linked to Bilbao and Santiago de Compostela. Both cities are in northern Spain. The campaigns will promote routes from the New York area and help sell the destinations to US travellers.

The idea is straightforward. A direct flight can make a place easier to reach. Promotion can help travellers notice that option and decide what they may want to do after landing. Together, air access and advertising can put a destination in front of people who might otherwise begin their Spanish trip elsewhere.

The agreements form part of a wider effort to spread tourism across Spain. They do not state that visitors must stay in either city or travel onward. That will depend on the trips people choose, transport connections and the experiences local businesses make available.

Two routes put northern Spain in focus

The campaigns promote United’s links between New York and Bilbao, and between Newark/New York and Santiago de Compostela. The route agreements were published in Spain’s official state gazette in July and August 2026.

The distinction matters. The agreements support promotion around existing route capacity. They do not announce that new flights will begin as a result of the campaigns. Travellers should check current schedules with the airline before planning a journey, because a tourism marketing agreement does not confirm daily service or year-round availability.

The two routes give the campaign clear destination names. They also create a chance to introduce American visitors to places beyond Spain’s busiest entry points. Whether visitors use Bilbao or Santiago as a final stop, a starting point or part of a longer holiday remains to be seen.

The United States has become a high-value market

US demand gives the campaign a strong commercial reason. Turespaña reported that 4.4 million US visitors travelled to Spain in 2025. That was 4.3% more than in 2024. Their estimated tourism spending reached €10.2 billion, up 13.4%. The agency described the United States as Spain’s fourth-largest market by tourism spending.

The momentum continued in the first half of 2026. Spain received around 2.3 million US tourists from January to June, a 9.5% rise on the same period a year earlier. US visitor spending reached €5.846 billion, up 17.6%.

Spending grew faster than arrivals during that period. This makes the market attractive to tourism businesses, but it does not tell us how much visitors spent in Bilbao or Santiago. The figures cover Spain as a whole. Local results will need to be measured separately.

More direct flights expand the choice of entry points

Scheduled air capacity between the United States and Spain also increased in 2026. Around two million seats were scheduled on direct flights between 1 April and 30 September. That was 8.3% more than during the same period in 2025. About 8,000 direct flights were planned, an 11.1% rise.

Spain ranked fifth in Europe for direct air capacity from the United States, behind the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy. Yet Spain’s capacity grew faster than those three markets in the period reported. Only Italy recorded a larger percentage increase.

More seats create more potential choice. They do not guarantee low fares, full flights or a particular schedule. The figures also cover Spain as a whole, not only the two northern routes. Still, the wider growth gives the campaign a timely setting: more direct connections can help bring travellers closer to destinations they may not have considered before.

Promotion is meant to turn access into interest

A flight route offers access. A marketing campaign tries to give people a reason to use it. Under the agreements, Turespaña and United will develop advertising and commercial support linked to each route. Digital paid media is the preferred channel. Other forms of promotion may be used when partners can assess their effectiveness.

This matters because a route by itself does not explain what a traveller can experience at the destination. The campaign needs to make the places easy to discover and the trip easy to plan. It can show how the air link fits into a holiday and help travel sellers present the destinations to customers.

The agreement allows the partners to use their own channels as well. They must agree on campaign plans, schedules and creative material. Turespaña must approve the final creative work. These conditions give the public tourism agency a formal role in shaping how Spain and the destinations appear.

Each agreement commits two hundred thousand dollars

Each of the two agreements sets a maximum paid-media budget of US$200,000. Turespaña and United will contribute equally, with US$100,000 each per agreement. Across both route campaigns, the combined paid-media commitment is therefore up to US$400,000.

The agreements also allow for extra activity through the partners’ own channels. If proposed, that activity can have a budget of up to 10% of the paid-media amount for each campaign. The documents describe maximum commitments, not proof that every possible dollar has been spent.

The funding is for tourism promotion. It does not pay for new airports or guarantee added flights. The agreements also do not state how many visitors the campaign will bring. Their value will be clearer after the partners report what they ran, how many people they reached and whether the promotion generated measurable travel demand.

The agreements require the partners to measure results

The campaign plans must set out how the partners will track performance. For online advertising, the agreements give views and clicks as possible measures. For offline activity, they refer to estimated visibility or audience impact. The partners also aim to quantify the return from the campaigns where possible.

These measures can show whether advertisements reached people and attracted attention. They do not, on their own, prove that a person booked a flight or visited a destination. A click is not a trip. A view is not a hotel stay. The strongest evaluation would connect promotion with bookings, arrivals, overnight stays and visitor spending.

The agreements set a useful standard because they ask for measurable activity. However, they do not publish a public target for extra visitors or a required level of tourism revenue. Readers will need later reports to judge whether the campaign met its purpose.

The longer goal is a wider spread of visitors

Turespaña says the promotion aims to make Spanish destinations more visible in the US market and to distribute tourism flows across more parts of the country. That is the central policy question behind the Bilbao and Santiago campaigns. Can a direct route and a focused message bring more visitors to destinations beyond the most familiar gateways?

A wider spread could give travellers more choices and help businesses in more places reach international customers. It may also give visitors a different way to plan a Spanish holiday. But wider promotion does not automatically mean visitors will move around the country. They may arrive in one city and stay there, or they may add several destinations to a longer itinerary.

The campaign can support that choice by making routes and destinations easier to find. The actual pattern will depend on visitor decisions and on whether local transport, accommodation and attractions meet their needs.

Local tourism businesses have a role to play

Airline and destination advertising can raise awareness, but local businesses shape the visitor experience. Hotels, guides, attractions, transport providers and travel sellers can help make the routes useful to visitors. They can develop information and services that fit the needs of travellers arriving from the United States.

Businesses can also look beyond the flight itself. A visitor may want to stay longer, visit more than one place or travel at a different time of year. The campaign could help make those options easier to see. However, the agreements do not promise longer stays or year-round demand.

Local operators will need reliable information about flight capacity, customer interest and booking patterns. If the campaign produces those signals, businesses can use them to plan. Without follow-up data, it will be difficult to separate campaign impact from wider changes in tourism demand.

Better connectivity does not guarantee a cheaper trip

More scheduled capacity can give travellers additional ways to reach Spain. It does not prove that fares will fall. Ticket prices change with season, demand, airline schedules and booking conditions. A larger number of seats across Spain does not reveal the fare on a particular New York to Bilbao or Newark to Santiago service.

Travellers should compare current schedules and prices before they commit. They should also check whether the route operates on their chosen dates and whether it suits the rest of their itinerary. The agreements support the promotion of these links, but they do not replace airline booking information.

For travel businesses, a larger market can create opportunity and competition. The key question is whether extra capacity matches demand and whether travellers can find the destinations easily. The campaign is one part of that process.

Campaign success should be judged by more than clicks

The Spain tourism marketing campaign focuses on Bilbao and Santiago for luring US visitors; yet, the success of the campaign will be evident through information other than just awareness. Views and clicks may prove that the campaign was noticed. However, views and clicks cannot mean that the person actually booked his/her trips, stayed overnight and even spent money there. The partners have to track number of bookings, number of arrivals, number of overnight stays, the period of staying and money spent during the staying. The partners have to give information on which markets the campaign was conducted in and what results were achieved.