Date Published: 05/11/2020
ARCHIVED - 9 out of 10 hotels now closed in Benidorm as tourism in the Costa Blanca suffers
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
The pandemic has seen occupancy rates plummet with foreign visitor numbers dropping drastically
Unfortunately, a similar scenario is being played out all over Spain as border restrictions prevent inter-regional travel.
The re-introduction of coronavirus lockdown restrictions in Spain and many other parts of Europe has now dashed any remaining hope that the tourism sector of the national economy might be able to salvage something from what has been a disastrous year ever since the first wave of the pandemic in the spring, and in Benidorm, one of the most popular resorts in the country and the leading destination for visitors to the Costa Blanca, it is reported that by next week nine out of every ten hotels will be closed along with many hostelry venues; even the famous Benidorm Palace is not attempting to make it through the winter and has opted to cut its losses and close until the situation improves.
The Benidorm hoteliers’ association Hosbec has stated that as of Monday 9th November only around 15 of the resort’s 150 hotels will remain open, offering just 4,000 beds to visitors. In the fortnight following the long holiday weekend of 10th to 12th October the occupancy rate in Benidorm hotels rose to 43.8 per cent of rooms available, climbing above 40 per cent for the first time since the spring with the exception of the month of August, but that figure is hugely misleading since only around 15 per cent of the hotels were actually still open.
More revealing is the comparison with the month of October 2019, which shows a decrease in occupancy of 45.2 percentage points. At the same time, with international travel having become extremely difficult Hosbec reports that last month 72.5 per cent of guests came from elsewhere in Spain: a further 13 per cent came from the UK despite the quarantine imposed by the British government on travellers returning home.
Both figures wil now be impossible to maintain due to the UK lockdown which begins today and prohibits foreign travel and the internal border restrictions across Spain.
In the rest of the Costa Blanca during the second half of October the hotel occupancy rate was just 35.9 per cent and for the whole month the figure was a discouraging 31.8 per cent, while in current circumstances, with the threat looming of people possibly being confined to their homes, even the prediction of 18 per cent in November may yet be shown to be over-optimistic.