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ARCHIVED - Spain lost 198 million euros of tourist spending PER DAY last year as Covid devastated the sector
64 million international visitors were lost to the pandemic last year tourism
French visitors outnumbered the British for the first time in many years
The scale of the disaster caused by the coronavirus pandemic in the international tourism sector in Spain was confirmed on Wednesday by the publication of the annual figures regarding visitor numbers and their estimated spending in this country, with the amount of revenue lost to Covid-19 calculated at an astonishing 72,172,000,000 euros.
That kind of number is hard to comprehend, but it equates to lost revenue of almost 198 million euros per day, or 8.2 million euros per hour, amply illustrating the devastating effect of the restrictions on travel which have been made necessary since coronavirus was first detected in Europe just over a year ago.
The number of people arriving in Spain from abroad in 2020 is reported by the government’s central statistics unit to have been just under 19 million, as opposed to 83.5 million in 2019, taking the total back down to levels last reported around 50 years ago when the Costas were a relatively new destination for tourists from northern Europe. The cancellation of flights and restrictions on travel affected the British market particularly severely, and for the first time in many years the UK was not the leading source of foreign visitors – numbers fell from 18.1 million in 2019 to just 3.17 million last year, a fall of 82.4 per cent, and France topped the list, supplying 3.88 million visitors to Spain, many of them no doubt crossing the border by car during the summer when restrictions were relaxed for a few months.
More visitors came from France than from any other country to the key tourist regions of Andalucía, Catalunya, the Comunidad Valenciana and Madrid, while the UK retained top spot in the Canaries and Germany provided most visitors to the Balearics. But in general terms the German market was also badly hit, the number of visitors to Spain dropping to 2.4 million in 2020 from 11.2 million the year before.
In terms of the economy, though, the most important statistics concern not the number of people visiting Spain but the amount of money they spent while in this country, and again the numbers show the absolutely devastating effect on the sector. International tourist spending is reported to have dropped from 91.9 billion euros in 2019 to 19.7 billion last year, seriously weakening a sector which had become one of the pillars of the Spanish economy over the last half-century.
Again, one of the most significant falls (and they are all very significant indeed!) relates to the amount spent in Spain by visitors from the UK. The total last year is reported to have reached 3.14 billion euros after dropping from almost 18 billion the year before, a decrease of 82.4 per cent, although in this instance the British remained the most important source of spending as the French tend to spend less per person during their stays in this country.
How times have changed. A year ago, when the final data for 2019 were published, Reyes Maroto, Spain’s Minister for Tourism, voiced the opinion that the peak of growth had not yet been reached after seven years of uninterrupted expansion and that after 83.9 million people visited this country during the year the figure would be even higher in 2020.
Now, the sector has been plunged into recession by a pandemic which looks as though it will not make it possible for the remainder of 2021 to be much better, and Sra Maroto has been under fire for daring to hint that it may be possible to partially reactivate tourism in time for Easter. In the meantime tourism now accounts for only 4.3 per cent of Spain’s GDP as opposed to over 12 per cent in 2019, and it is reported that almost 730,000 people in the sector are no longer working (300,000 having been made redundant and another 430,000 on ERTE furlough schemes).
The Cehat federation of hotels and tourist accommodation describes 2020 as being a “catastrophic” year which ended with only 10 per cent of hotels open and 95 per cent of employees on ERTE schemes.
Exceltur is forecasting a partial recovery within the tourism sector this year but this will most probably be driven by domestic holiday-making rather than by visitors from abroad, with airlines currently unable to resume flights, and quite possibly unwilling to offer the same services as before the pandemic when international travel is possible again, on account of the restrictions which it seems will be placed on travellers.
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