Literary Tourism: Novel vacations.

Dubrovnik: To feel like one of the protagonists of Game of Thrones.

Dubrovnik: To feel like one of the protagonists of Game of Thrones.

Literary tourism is in fashion. The offer to recreate the settings of your favorite novels is growing. From the well-known and television saga of  Game of Thrones, With which we can travel a large part of Ireland, Dubrovnik, Seville and other locations to the London routes following in the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, where a Museum has been created in the address that his home occupied: Baker Street 221b, an address that did not exist when Conan Doyle gave life to the famous detective.

The idea is successful: this past Easter, the Baztán Valley, a place little known to most until Dolores Redondo launched it to fame at the hands of her detective Amaia Salazar, got full occupation, thanks to the readers of the winner of the Planeta Award.

What is literary tourism like?

Municipalities join the bandwagon of the trend and tourist routes begin to be organized around the novels set in their locality, stories where the environment becomes one of the protagonists. Beyond the classic routes through Castilla la Mancha following in the footsteps of Don Quixote, almost ten years ago, Vigo organized a tourist route in the footsteps of Leo Caldas, the detective created by Sunday Villar, which after two installments, disappeared leaving readers wanting more. Today we can visit Valladolid following the scenarios of Mori moment de Cesar Perez Guellida o Vitoria Gasteiz , walking the streets where the intrigue of "The Silence of the White City" by Eva Gª Sáenz de Urturi.

The latest trend is that it is the writers themselves who act as guides.. This is the main claim of the route organized by the town hall of Sevilla, to walk the streets of the city hand in hand with the writer Eva Diaz Perez, author of The Color of Angels.

Others authors, like Eloy Moreno, they organize it themselves, punctually according to their schedule allows them.

In Spain, a literary tourism business initiative, bookmeup, launched by two young university students, ADE students, Gemma Bosch and Mar Javier has received the award for the best entrepreneurial initiative of the YUZZ Center of the University of Valencia. The difference is that the offer goes beyond the tourist trail through the scenes of the novels.

Route through Valencia following the scenes of the Valeria saga by Elisabeth Benavent.

Route through Valencia following the scenes of the Valeria saga by Elisabeth Benavent.

Bookmeup interview

Actualidad Literatura has spoken with Gemma and Mar, creators of Bookmeup and this is what they tell us about their project:

AL: bookmeup It is your first business project when you are still in the university stage and with it you receive the award for the best entrepreneur from the YUZZ Center of the University of Valencia. Did you think something like this was going to happen when you started building Bookmeup?

BookmeUp: Not at all, we would never have imagined getting to where we are getting. At first, it was just the idea of ​​two friends who share a love of reading and we just got carried away. The truth is, it has been a unique experience in which we have learned many things, and we are very proud of everything we are building.

AL:  What is the Bookmeup offer? For travelers with a taste for reading or to encourage lazy readers to get out of the house? 

BookmeUp: Bookmeup is a service where the reader can book in the restaurants where their favorite characters dine, download the music they listen to, go to buy from the websites of the stores where they do it, and travel to the places where their stories take place. ; being able to share all this with the rest of users.

Actually for both, since on the one hand for lovers of reading it will be a platform where they can enjoy everything that surrounds their favorite book and live the story as the protagonist himself.

On the other hand, we believe that it could be a great incentive to encourage reading, and with it tourism. We would even like to create a route focused on children's reading in schools, so that it stops being an obligation for children and becomes an attraction, being able to travel later to the places where history takes place. It would be an innovative and different way of reaching children through reading.

AL: Six traveling experiences to start with, Valencia, Madrid, Tangier, Edinburgh or Baztán, following Megan Maxwell, Elisabet Benavent, Dolores Redondo, María Dueñas and Elena Montagud. How did you come to this election? All writers, focused on a female audience? When is Game of Thrones for?

At first, we limited the market to the romantic and historical genre, since these types of books are quite susceptible to living an experience. After going out to the streets to do surveys, we contrasted the opinion of our public with our tastes about reading and with books that could create this experience, and that is how we chose them.

AL: What will we be able to find in Bookmeup a year from now?

BookmeUp: We hope that within a year the app will be ready to download with all the functionalities ready and with a great variety of uploaded books, not only the ones we have now available, so that all readers can enjoy a unique reading experience.

From Actualidad Literatura We wish Bookmeup much success and we hope that each year the offer is greater and we can enjoy all the great settings that set Spanish literature.

And if ours is to go our own way ...

The literary tourist offer begins to be wide and varied. Even so, at the moment, he doesn't even pick up the great influx of tourists in search of the settings for his favorite novels. Most still plan their own routes, with the help, yes, of more and more websites that help independent tourists to create their own tours through the most literary streets of the Spanish and European geography.


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