Benidorm reveals plan to shed bucket-and-spade image
Benidorm, one of the pioneers of the bucket-and-spade holiday, has confirmed it plans to apply for World Heritage status.
If successful, the Spanish resort will join a list of other protected sites around the world, including the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids of Giza.
Local tourism chiefs say the city deserves to be placed alongside Spain’s 40 other Unesco-recognised sites, which include the Alhambra in Granada, the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and the Teide National Park in Tenerife.
"Tourism is now the world’s most dynamic and important industry, whether viewed in terms of employment, cultural change or environmental impact, and the beach holiday is a particularly significant component of tourism’s growth and as such, pioneering holiday destinations, like Benidorm, deserve to be taken seriously," said Visit Benidorm.
It claims that the resort ticks six of the 10 boxes required for World Heritage status, only one of which is required to apply.
It says that Benidorm, known for its high-rise hotels and apartment blocks along with its long sandy beaches, ‘represents a masterpiece of human creative genius’, that the resort ‘provides a unique or exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization alive or missing’, and that it ‘represents natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and scenic importance’.
Local tourism chiefs claim to have the support of academics at France’s University of Angers, who claim that Benidorm, once a small fishing village, provides a ‘unique global template for other holiday resorts’.
Mayor Agustín Navarro, who put the suggestion to a recent council meeting, told the Guardian it would be a way for his city to put the association with mass tourism behind it.
"We wanted to protect all that we’ve achieved during the recent decades as well as give it dignity and value," he told the newspaper.
It could be six years before Bendiorm finds out if it has made it onto the Unesco list.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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