Buenos Aires as a destination of urban and cultural

The increasing number of tourists visiting Buenos Aires as a destination of urban and cultural tourism has updated the offer of the city’s cultural patrimony. This trend, associated to the value enhancement strategy of buildings, historical neighborhoods as web as the development of cultural events, has produced original proposals, performed by public and private organizations. Besides the new circuits, there also appears the development of new technologies which provide tools such the mp3 - with digital files to listen in situ - or the web 2.0, with blogs proposing the configuration of "personal maps" of the city.
They were thought initially for the tourist, the same resources and circtuis have been adopted gradually by the city’s inhabitants in order to change their views of the city. The city’s inhabitants are accustomed to seeing these things which have always been there, many times we forget the value (aesthetic, historical and emotional) of an urban landscape, which has never been truly known or seen.
Professionals of different fields related to the cultural tourism talked with BUE in order to analyze this phenomenon in blossom.





Interview 1. Carmen María Ramos de Balcarce. Unesco Chair
"We have to work on the design of new circuits, which generates the revaluation of a valuable but sometimes forgotten patrimony”


Which differences and similarities do you find between cultural tourism and patrimonial tourism?
The cultural tourism expresses the set of relationships between the tourism and the different ways of cultural expression such as visiting a museum, a place or a monument, going to a music or theatre performance, appreciating a landscape or several handmade expressions, taking part in traditional events. The research field includes the analysis of the impact of tourism on the local population and the capacity of the places, and others.
The tourism of patrimony focuses specially on the protection, value and management of the different ways of tangible or intangible patrimony from a perspective of sustainable tourist development.

Is the cultural tourism focused on and fostered preferably for the foreign visitor? Or does it intends to attract the local tourist, or even the inhabitant of the city?
The cultural tourism has many ways and all of them are valuable. In order to attract the foreign visitor, the community should have something to show and believe that the offer is unique, valuable and interesting. Patrimonial tourism focuses on the supremacy of the patrimony which can be found somewhere. The object is the patrimony and tourism must be a means to protect and disseminate it.

Which is your diagnosis about the present cultural tourism in Buenos Aires?
Buenos Aires is a special city for the cultural tourism due to its variety and quality of the cultural expressions. Just to mention those activities taking part in the established calendar, we can think about ArteBA, the Art’s week, Buenos Aires Photo. Among many others, related to the placement of the city according to tourism. This, apart from the quality of the museums such as the Malba or the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Museum of Fine Arts), the most important one in South America. However, there is a very important work to do, including the improvement but also the design of new circuits which bring about a renovated appreciation of untidy or forgotten valuable patrimony.
La Boca, one of the most emblematic tourism destinations of the City, needs without delay a plan of traffic reorganization, for instance, in order that tourists do not walk between the fumes and the noise of big trucks moving through the edge of the Riachuelo, or near beautiful protected buildings which were destroyed by the real estate industry or are untidy or deserte

Can you mention other destinations with development perspective in future?
I would say that the entire city is an amazing destinations for cultural tourism due to its monuments at open air, its offer of museums, free shows, street art, squares and gardens, the architecture of its buildings, emblematic neighborhoods, among others. But I believe that there is a lot of things to do among the different fields of the government to improve the cleaning, the safety, the traffic order, the squatting of public space but also to stop the demolitions of buildings with great patrimonial value. All these requirements are needed in order that Buenos Aires can be considered a truly South American capital of cultural tourism.

Which is the market share of the Argentina with respect to cultural tourism?
It is known that more and more travelers` motivation is culture, even those who travel due to business or those who look for sun and beach are trying to complement their stays with some neatly cultural activity. Tour operators know that the cultural offer is a good sales argument, which makes the difference when people take the decision.





Interview 2. Lucas Rentero. Eternautas
"It is of paramount importance to improve the information we give”


How did the idea of offering historical and cultural tours around Buenos Aires appear?
I met Ricardo Watson and Gabriel Di Meglio when we were studying the first years of History at UBA (University of Buenos Aires). As we advanced, we started to consider this as an alternative job prospect and imagined the possibility of the design of tours around the city. .. The fist step consisted of the evaluation of several places, their cultural interest, their history. In 1999, we defined our first four tours. In those days, only the Government of the city offered walking tours. The rest of the proposals was, most of them, the traditional tourist ones (the paradigmatic city-tour) or implied the movement to other far cultural places of the country (for instance Villa María in Córdoba, or the holiday of grape harvest in Mendoza). Gradually, such proposal started to take part in events organized by the city’s government (as Ciudad abierta, or the actions performed in order to give commercial value to Puerto Madero or the neighbourhood of Abasto). They were thought for the event context but then they were kept for the local public.

Which target public did you have in mind for the Eternautas` tours?
Originally, the proposal was thought for foreign people who wanted to get acquainted with the city from another point of view. We knew that there was a public getting interested in the “cultural tourism” in the cities, a tourism consolidated later. The first way of testing that these tours work was standing in the Plaza de Mayo and offering a tour guided around the square to the public. At the end of the tours, we asked collaboration at will.

Did you know similar experiences in other cities of America or Europe?
The examples basically came from Europe (as the London Walks). In New York, a similar work was performed by the Big Onion. In Latin America, just Peru and Mexico had similar tours but they are more associated to the production of guides of places, in general, carried out by researchers of the local universities. Just that…

How and when did you jump into this industry?
The article published on the section Via Libre (La Nación newspaper) about our tour called "Buenos Aires al Sur" (along the streets of San Telmo, La Boca and Barracas) changed us….Since then, there has been a growth boom. However, since that moment, we have noticed another public: the local inhabitants and those foreign people living in the city. At the same time, the inhabitants seemed so concerned about the tours that we had to design them again, creating new tours for those people who know the history and characters of the history and culture of Buenos Aires.

How was the experience of the crisis of 2001 for a new enterprise as Eternautas?
Basically, we had to take decisions. For instance, after 2001, in order to cut costs down, we decided to limit the tours on vans and increase the walking ones. The another important change implied the understanding of the new tourist profile: if ,before 2001, Buenos Aires was visited by people from American upper class, Brasil and Latin America in transit to other destinations (Bariloche, Cataratas, Northerwest part of our country), after the crisis the city appeared in the world tourism agenda as a complete destination from the point of view of the urban joy. A foreign tourism aimed at the middle class has begun to grow, tourists who stay in the city and go to restaurants, cultural places, shows and museums.

Which is the difference between the Eternautas` proposal and the traditional offer?
Besides the selection of tours and contents, the guides of Eternautas are specialized in letters, art, economics, architecture and politics. Thus, we started to reach other sorts of public: schools, companies, universities, foundations, assistants to congresses. Another difference was the focus we made on training of guides. Regarding to the tours, we are interested at the feedback produced by our product. The tour operators tell us that tourists loved our service. We also receive feedbacks by email, on which people make comments or ask for bibliography. Some people commit themselves with the cause…Even, they take the tour again.
Another example of our market share is the decision of providing the traditional city tour just in English and not trilingual (Spanish, Portuguese and English), due to two reasons: one of them is that we find irritating to listen at the same accounts thrice and the another one because we can not communicate such number of contents in three languages.

How was the evolution of the local consumption of the product? Did you have problems in order to integrate into the most traditional tourist offer?
It took time. However, soon, other companies noticed that even though we were their competitors, we also contributed to enlarge this business. In fact, we agree with a new demand of the agencies: guides with major knowledge of the city, history and culture. Each agency began to consolidate its niche: while the traditional offer went on capitalizing the big contingents, as those arriving from cruises or those who prefer sports or shopping, we found our own profile. In fact, many guides (those with traditional training) started to take our courses.
In short, we are interested in seeing and selling Buenos Aires as a cultural destination for the tourist. Foreign students, for instance, demand on getting acquainted with the history of the local culture. They are demanding clients. Besides, we need to control the chaos that at first the city makes them feel up to moment they find their places (as it happens in Palermo or San Telmo nowadays)

How would you define the present moment of Eternautas?
Nowadays, our major challenge is the definition of our offer in future, we have to focus on it and make it with a high quality. Some times we have said “no” to specific requests, even though we find them interesting. The cause of our refusal is due to that these requests imply a research work which is not supported commercially then. Our proposal is being consolidated and finding a logical position of growth.
Parallely, we are preparing other projects such as the book “Buenos Aires tiene historia” (Aguilar, 2008) and the production of contents for the TV channel Encuentro. Besides, as travel agency, we are part of the association of Agencies of the City (Aviabue). Furthermore, we take part of Destino Argentina, an organization whose main goal is the promotion of high quality tourism abroad.

Finally, ¿why "Eternautas"?
At the moment of choosing the name, several things were taken into account, on one hand, all of us were fond of comics and we loved the fact that political issues put on science fiction happenings took place in Buenos Aires, with its characters and urban settings. We mix all the matters (city, places, tours, culture, politics and history). But, above all, we chose that name due to the idea that travelling implied the movement in two dimensions, time and space.





Interview 3. Horacio Raspeño. Ningit
"The profile of our ideal user is a completely independent traveler who is very fond of culture”


How did Ningit and the idea of making urban maps of Buenos Aires appear?
Ningit is an enterprise created by three professionals: a graphic designer, visual communication designer and industrial designer. In 2000, three future partners traveled to Europe in order to take the postgraduate studies in Berlin (in innovation) and London (in typography), where we started to analyze deeply the structure and style of tourist guides and maps. When we went back to Buenos Aires, after the crisis of 2001, we started to plan the guidelines of the Ningit’s project. We knew that it would not be a simple or immediate process. The first step was to find a door to enter into the market, the innovation played an important role. While the 85% of the graduated chose the way of “studying” as a work perspective, we knew that, at least parallely, we were starting to develop a project with different characteristics. Our first idea was to divide the project into two business units: maps as a closed product to be sold in bookstores and those maps to be customized and sold to companies.

Which information must an urban map contain?
Every map includes a cartographic part and another one of contents. In our proposal, the main cartography is that one known for the tourism promotion: that is to say, the part near the river which links both football stadiums ( from the Boca Juniors’ field to the River Plate`s one). There also are a complete map of the city, another one of the nearby routes and three must-see tours of the province of Buenos Aires (Tigre, San Isidro and La Plata). Finally, we include the subway map. With regard to texts, we propose ten must see places of Buenos Aires, an agenda of activities, useful information for the traveler (depending on the addressed public), and a series of distinctive features of the city. Furthermore, for us, it is a pleasure giving advices about tango, gastronomy, shopping, sports, and all the important city’s issues!

Is it possible to enter a new product into a consolidated offer of the market?
Nowdays, there is a En la actualidad, hay una editorial líder en cantidad de oferta en el mercado [Note from the editor: De Dios editores]. It is very clear that for the time being, we can just compete with the product “information map of Buenos Aires”. They produce many other products. However, when we decided to start this enterprise, we believe on the improvement of the average quality of the market. For that purpose, we focused on the material of the product (we chose a double-weight paper, we designed a folded part on the back and also our products were water-proof). Furthermore, we were worried about performing a high quality cartography… We analyzed the best way of presenting the cartography and the reference taking into account the foreign’ point of view. For instance, we decided to locate the Northern part upwards, even though in Buenos Aires, due its shape, it is very practical to make it the other way round. Nevertheless, we did not find it to ignore a twenty-year convention … In short, our goal, since our beginning, has been a product of international parameter as good as an Insidemap, a Lonely Planet; en Brazil, the products by Quatro Rodas.

Who are the users of your maps?
Basically, we make maps for the foreign traveler. One in Spanish, for Latin American and Spanish tourists. And another one in English, for the rest of the world. But not all the Latin American people use the maps in the same way. For instance, we have analyzed and realized that, in general, Mexican people are prone to guide themselves orally. They prefer asking, or if they are in their country, indicating the way. They do not use maps. If we could define the profile, we would say that our user is a completely independent traveler, who prefers using a map. Besides, our user is usually fond of culture.

Why this cultural information?
Firstly, because we consider ourselves as travelers with cultural profile. For that reason, we have not made route maps (even though maybe one day we present it). We believe that nowadays, the cultural tourism is more focused on the city rather its outskirts…the city offers a greater cultural variety.

¿Is there space for subjectivity in a map? How is the Buenos Aires shown by Ningit?
There is definitely a space for subjectivity, the romantic part of the project…At first, great part of this Infomap of Buenos Aires was literally thought in notable or historical bars and these interests were included as information on the product, as well the street fairs, cultural centers, museums which have a privileged space on our maps.
We believe that Buenos Aires is an excellent destination for those people who love cultural tourism due to the city’s quantity and quality: shows, theatres, concerts, cinema theatres, festivals, architecture (free and available for everyone), cafes... Culture is also found within our customs: the night-life, gastronomy, the way we eat, how we use the public space...

Which is your opinion of the visual communication on urban scale of Buenos Aires? Is it very different from those you saw during your stay in Europe?
Even though we are not specialized in urban scale, I do not think that these things are well-done in Europe and we fail to do it. Here and there, the communication depends on different idiosyncrasies . I like the Nordic model: very neat environments, in which a signal is focused not only for its design but also for clean context free of pollution. I went to Europe thinking on how we could improve the “object” of the signal and I came back fully convinced that such issue is a little part of the discussion.
The signal could be excellent but if there are superimposed signals on the top and at the bottom, people cannot see anything. Without the context, I find the beauty of the shape useless. I consider that a waste of time. So, the question I ask myself before the design is: Have we a culture that respects the collective conventions? Are we capable of reaching a consensus on life and our spaces?


What would you define the work scale of the information design?
We make pocket products: maps, dictionaries, recipe books, guides…In general, such pieces have a time of use to be read. Following the Catalonian Joan Costa, in accordance with the disciplines such as advertising which necessarily look for stimulus to get the people’s perception, we are interested in consultative pieces and low reading. That is to say, design for the information and not for the perception. A great dividing line separates one design field from another one.

Going back into the city, do you notice an improvement of the orientation in the city due to the development and use of new technologies?
In fact, that happens: the individuality goes through a complete expansion…The fast pace of technology is truly useful for those who know and can use it. Nevertheless, such resources assume a previous material accessibility (the advice that reproduces mp3, for instance) but also a symbolic one (the capacity of using such resources). I focus on the Nordic model: not only for its aesthetics, but also for the culture reflected available for everyone. However, such model cannot be applied to our culture. We live in a situation of constant emergency…and few dialogue (as it is observed in the imposition of trademarks and signals, which lastly generating a great visual chaos at urban level).

Finally, how would you define your relationship with Buenos Aires?
Buenos Aires… some days I find it amazing. In cultural terms, it is always amazing. However, pollution, noise and the shadows produced by buildings over the green spaces make me be in bad humor… Buenos Aires is a beautiful city, but sometimes selfish. Our relationship is truly passionate…