The Spanish market, like all the Mediterranean ones, was no exception. Tourism in general has suffered, while outdoor tourism has instead shown its best weapons, as we wrote a few days ago in this article. The colleagues of Camping Profesional, with whom we have an excellent working relationship, have painted a precise picture of what has happened to tourism in Iberian land. We offer it, with their permission, in full version.
Two years after the first Covid-positive patient in Spain, the pandemic has left a devastating trail in tourism, with losses totaling at least €150 billion and nearly 117 million tourists vanishing, even if the forecasts for 2022 are quite more optimistic. The current year will not be that of full recovery of pre-pandemic values, industry experts agree, but it will give a strong boost to tourist movements and then return to normal between 2023 and 2025, depending on the business segments.
The data from the surveys of the National Institute of Statistics (INE) on the arrivals of foreign tourists (Frontur) and the expenses incurred (Egatur) show that in Spain, between 2020 and 2021, almost 117 million tourists have stopped traveling compared to pre-pandemic records. In terms of expenditure, about €125 billion have been lost in the last two years deriving from foreign tourists and about €25 billion from domestic tourists on their internal travels. To make this comparison, the expenditure data of Spanish citizens abroad were not included, even if part of the purchases are made in Spain (for example, if you buy a tourist package).
From best to worst year
In 2019, 83.5 million international tourists arrived in Spain, a historic record, while in 2020 this figure dropped to 19 million (also a record, but on the contrary) and in 2021 31.13 million entered. Assuming that, in the absence of a pandemic, the number of tourists would have remained stable compared to 2019, in 2020 and 2021 those almost 120 million foreign tourists (which are the main source of income for the sector, with two thirds of its turnover) were lost.
In the same way, the data relating to expenditure can be calculated: in 2019 international tourists arriving in Spain brought in €91.91 billion, while in 2020 only 19.74 billion were recorded, and in the year just ended 34,82 billion. The sum of both years, the worst in the history of Spanish tourism, show a poor balance: not even €55 billion against the more than €180 billion that would have arrived if Covid had not stopped the world. In essence, €125 billion that have stopped entering the coffers of campsites, airlines, restaurateurs, leisure entrepreneurs, museums…
The recovery of national tourism
To these data must be added the decline in domestic tourism, which although it has evolved much better than foreign tourism, has not even reached the volumes of 2019, a goal that the sector estimates it can reach this year in the most tourist destinations, especially the coasts. Waiting to know the results of the resident tourism survey (Familitur) for the fourth quarter 2021, which will be published at the end of March, between January and September 2021 the Spaniards made 106.54 million trips, compared to 193.87 million in 2019. In 2020, 101.5 million had been made.
Although the number of domestic trips has not yet reached pre-pandemic levels, the most intense decline was that of trips abroad, which fell to a fifth. In 2019, nearly 174 million trips had been made within national borders and 20.2 million internationally. In other words, around 10% of the total had traveled abroad. In 2020, of the 101.5 million trips, 96.4 were domestic and only 5 million international (5%), while in 2021 (between January and September), 106.5 million movements were recorded, of which 102,2 internal and the remaining 4.4 million went abroad (4.1%).
In terms of spending, the Spaniards spent €48.06 billion on travel in 2019, just double what was calculated in 2021 (up to the third quarter). In all of 2020, the sum stood at €21.1 billion. The result is that between 2020 and 2021 Spaniards will have spent around €50 billion less on travel than they would have done without the restrictions on tourist movements imposed around the world, and half of these correspond to national travel.
The fall in GDP generated by tourism
This is, broadly speaking, the map of the sector in Spain, which well reflects the sharp decline that the GDP of the tourism sector has suffered during this period. Although the data for 2021 are not yet complete, the 2019-2020 evolution is clear: before the pandemic, tourism represented 12.4% of GDP, while according to the INE this contribution fell to 5.5% in 2020.
In terms of employment, the bleeding was much more contained due to the effect of the Expedientes de Regulación Temporal de Empleo (ERTE, the temporary rules in support of work), which allowed jobs in the sector to “keep”: thus, in 2020 employment in tourism was equal to 11.8% of the total economy, only 0.9 percentage points less than in 2019.
Now, after the end of 2021 and an uncertain start to 2022, following the strong expansion of the Omicron variant, the sector is confident that this has been only a setback on the road to recovery that began last May.
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