The young Chinese Emily and CC Liu take portraits of each other from the Forat del Dimoni, a small hole located at the beginning of the Tossa de Mar wall with a postcard background: Es Codolar beach. They star in a most complete photo session… Fifteen long minutes of clicks. Now looking at the camera, now towards the blue of the sea, now with sunglasses, now with her hair up, now with her fingers in victory… Each of these moments has its own snapshot, which they review once the session is complete. and that they will probably post later on their social networks, as thousands and thousands of Asian tourists have already done.
For months, long queues have formed to take a picture in front of that postcard frame, located at the foot of the Museu Municipal, which appeared, along with other spaces such as the beach or the walled enclosure, in a video clip that the South Korean singer YooA filmed in this town on the Costa Brava. Most of those waiting their turn are young Koreans and Chinese and, to a lesser extent, Japanese or Malaysian.
El Forat del Dimoni is perhaps one of the most popular places among Asian visitors to Tossa de Mar, a group that began to pay attention to this fishing village in 2017, after the town appeared in a Korean television series, The legend of the blue sea. The image of two teenagers starring in a love chase around Vila Vella went around the world and became one of the best advertising campaigns that a municipality could have without scratching their pockets. Something similar to what Ava Gardner achieved in 1950 with the filming of her in Tossa de Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, key to the rise of tourism on the Costa Brava. A bronze statue of the actress in a viewpoint remembers her.
Two video clips of the South Korean singer have recently been the ones that have once again placed the municipality on the Asian map. “The last one achieved 57 million downloads in Asia in a short time,” explains the mayor, Ramon Gascons. The numbers are dizzying, the possibilities that open up with Asian tourism are multiplying, and the travel behavior of the group is being studied by tourism managers to get the most out of it. “We are carrying out a study on their habits, their consumption, their origin, what motivates them, where they stay, what they eat or to find out, for example, why some days there are no Koreans among the visitors…”, explains Francesc Zucchitello , president of the Associació Professional d’Empresaris d’Hostaleria de Tossa, who stresses that his massive presence in recent months is due to several factors, beyond the series and video clips.
Clues are given by young Chinese students Chloé and Valentine. “We saw Tossa’s recommendation on the Little Red Book social commerce application, users indicated that she had very beautiful landscapes,” they explain.
The profile of the Asian who visited Tossa this Tuesday is very similar: young people, women, predominate, and for all of them Tossa de Mar is one more stopover on their visit to Barcelona. Many have previously visited other European countries such as France or Italy or will continue their route through Spain.
This is the case of the couple Eva Lpeng and Walle Hao, who on their honeymoon will also have visited Seville, Granada and Madrid. “The television series has also been a bit to blame for our being here,” she says after taking a picture in a flowery corner of Vila Vella. Koreans love to take pictures where their idols have been before. “They are highly influenced by the media, series or movies shot here,” she says at the Catalan Tourism Agency.
95% come by bus, in Sarfa, which in May has twelve connections between Estació del Nord and Tossa. “There are days when we double our trips,†says a driver. Most arrive with the morning buses and spend a half or full day in Tossa. Those that make night are residual. “We have the reservation of some Japanese, but very few in general,” says the receptionist at the Capri hotel, on the seafront. Neither are taxi drivers much benefited by their presence, who see them pass by on a daily basis. “They leave the station and go straight away, they already know where they have to go; At most we make some trips with someone clueless who has missed the busâ€, affirms the taxi driver Jose MarÃa González.
They do not separate from the mobile, which they carry as a map and where they look on their social networks for tourist attractions and even the photo of what they are going to order to eat. In fact, catering is the sector that benefits the most from its presence. Eva Roura, from the LluÃs restaurant, is full of praise for this group. “They are very polite, nice and very respectful,†she says. “What they like the most is seafood,†she says.
