The Open Door Policy

June was officially Roadmap Europa´s maiden month in operation, the dawn of a new era! So while the party balloons gradually deflated we hit the autopistas of Galicia to knock on doors and meet our new neighbours in the tourism, fashion and service industries.

As one of the regions with more traditional family businesses, we found significant variations in the resources dedicated to marketing, research and communication in different companies and organisations. Many businesses and public sector organisations still struggling to be comfortable with investing in research and marketing; at the same time there are more progressive companies with significant experience implementing dynamic marketing strategies to compete effectively at a national and international level.



Our first client was the regional government for whom we researched and developed a guide to help the public servants who assist new immigrants with setting up their lives in Spain and finding work. A very topical issue as there has been enormous debate over how to respond to the waves of immigrants currently arriving in Spain via the Canary Islands. We initially conducted a series of indepth interviews in order to establish a good base of knowledge for the development of the guide. We met some great people and heard stories of the sacrifices, hardship and success of immigrants from places such as Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, Ivory Coast, Senegal and China. Working on this project also led to an invitation to share our own, very different experience, at a seminar on immigration trends, policy and practice in Galicia.
Since then we have continued our business development travels, relaying back and forth between A Coruña and Vigo with side trips to Lugo and Ourense. We have also delivered some website evaluation consulting work and continue working on a marketing plan with one of the local wine regions.

Logos and Nenos

In April and May we continued to make progress in setting up the company and arranging all the nuts and bolts such as website, logos, business cards, laptops, email etc. Most of these things took longer than anticipated but at least we have been relatively happy with the results and what we have will allow us to operate effectively until we are ready to upgrade some of these things in the medium term. Thanks to the guys at Promedia for their support and patience in getting this work completed. However, the bureaucratic delays provided us with an opportunity to take some time studying the local trends in the online space and in relation to youth shopping, media and communication habits. This research and analysis has helped us understand local issues, provided a talking point on our visits to potential clients and was also picked up by the local print media.

Recent years have seen a strong resurgence in the use of the Galician language in all walks of Galician life. We took some time out to see how easy it is for local parents to find kids websites in Galician. Unfortunately this proved to be relatively difficult and searches using a wide range of possible keywords in Galician produced patchy results. Those sites that allow kids to play and learn online in Galician were hard to find with a small number of exceptions such as the regional government´s Department of Education website (Xunta de Galicia, Conselleria de Educacion) but even this site was difficult to navigate.

In some further analysis we reviewed the state of online tourism in the northern “Green Spain” by testing a selection of the leading tourism promotion websites such as Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Santiago and others. Most of these sites were fairly clunky and were outdated designs with basic databases of accomodation, limited content and poor usability. One notable exception was the site of Santiago with offers good content depth around a range of themes of interest to travellers and good usability to make the whole experience painless and stimulating. Other standout sites at a national level offering a great online experience for potential visitors were those of Iles Balears and Valencia.

For the history books...

For the history books and our own benefit we though it best to fill the gap between now and when we arrived back in Spain after our travels, so here's the abridged version of what we got up to in the first half of 2006...

Late January we got down to FITUR in Madrid, Spain´s main tourism trade fair, to see the local industry in action and participated in an online tourism seminar put on by the World Tourism Organisation. Given Spain is one of the most popular destinations globally it was no surprise to find ourselves confronted with acres of stands. A vertitable paradise for anyone who can't resist collecting lots of brightly coloured brochures at these sorts of events.

We enjoyed chatting to some of the local tourism authorities about their current plans and priorities, though I’m not quite sure what function the azafatas (hostesses) perform apart from beautifying the stands, most didn’t seem to know much about the product they were representing.


February saw us kick off the legal process of starting up the company here with registration of business names, tax registration and similar arrangements, most of which was wrapped in a thick bundle of bureaucratic red tape. Most steps we took over the next couple of months seemed to involve getting official stamps and waiting a couple of weeks for a variety of different pieces of paper.

Good news was that we were accepted by the local Chamber of Commerce into their Business Incubator program and were soon able to hang a sign on the door, shop for stationery and most importantly acquire a white board (an essential accessory to brainstorm and workshop in any start-up).

The opening of our first office here in Spain (and those of the other companies with which we share the building) was also accompanied by a press conference with various politicians and local business leaders. This gave Catalina her first chance to meet the press and spread the news about Roadmap and after a crash course in media relations she achieved some excellent coverage with the regional TV, radio and newspapers. From the regional press, Catalina below with Rosa who manages the business centre for the Chamber of Commerce.

February also saw me head to Dubai for a brief consulting engagement with the Middle East office of UK based research firm, YouGov. Office the world over look much the same...

The view from the window is usually more interesting...

Dubai is an interesting place with a sharp contrast between the desert, traditional Arabic culture and Islam; and booming business, trade and construction sectors. Apparently it has a large proportion of the world’s construction cranes and large swathes of town are construction sites. The food was great and the warm weather a relief from the cold and rain in Europe at this time of year.

Morphing the blog

Now that we are busy building Roadmap Europa it makes sense that our blog should reflect this. So over the next weeks we'll be bringing it up to date with our news, views and adventures in research and marketing here in Spain. To bring the blog to life we will also update much more frequently than when we were travelling and setting up the company.

First of all what have we been up to? Well the next couple of entries will fill in the gaps in the past couple of months and then we'll get blogging on what is happening now...

Here's where it all began...

Well, here it is.

A few spare minutes in my lunch hour and we're off and running.

This blog will broaden your mind, keep you up to date with some really interesting people, places and things, and expand into a European media, design, travel and marketing empire based around the Roadmap brand within 10 years.

Or could just be a way for you to see some of our holiday pics and share some thoughts, experiences and ideas.

Enjoy!