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Date Published: 22/05/2020
ARCHIVED - Spain caves in to competition and will re-open for tourists this summer
Announcements by Greece and Italy that they were ready to open for business has pushed the Spanish Government into finally making a decision
However, concrete dates have still to be confirmed.
On Saturday Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that Spain would be permitting foreign tourists to enter the country during July and encouraged Spanish nationals to start planning their summer holidays" from June 22nd onwards.
In 2019 Spain welcomed 83.7 million foreign tourists who spent a staggering 92,278 million euros (that’s 92 billion).
Last year more than 18 million British travellers chose Spain, and tourism accounts for 12.3 per cent GDP, an estimated 12.7 per cent of all Spanish jobs servicing this important sector.
This week the Spanish government has been under significant pressure to make a decision about whether Spain would, or wouldn´t be opening its borders for foreign tourists this year, following the decision of other key European players to "take a calculated risk" and re-open for tourists.
"We're facing a calculated risk in the knowledge that the contagion curve may rise again," Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte said in a televised address to the nation on Saturday. "We have to accept it, otherwise we will never be able to start up again” he said, as justification for the decision to allow tourist to enter the country without having to go into quarantine from June 3rd.
Greece is also set to launch its tourism comeback. City hotels are scheduled to re-open on June 1st followed by seasonal hotels a month later, banking on less tourists, but more affluent ones to re-energize a sector which employs one in five Greeks. With less than 3,000 cases and only 166 deaths, the early lock-down and geographical spread across its many islands have helped to give the country a head start on many of its European neighbours, making it a feisty competitor for Spain
The number of Covid-19 cases worldwide passed five million people on Friday (5,027,732 according to the latest official count ) and has killed at least 328,730 people so far, yet the fear of contagion seems to diminish day by day and the population is becoming de-sensitised to not only the consequences of the pandemic but also their own personal risk.
The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to warn that there is "still a long way to go in this pandemic", and in spite of multiple projects reporting progress in the race to find a vaccine, there is no guarantee that anyone is safe.
But let’s face it, we’re all really bored with this "virus thing" now, we’ve had enough of being patient, being responsible, listening to TV presenters presenting, scientists analysing, politicians pontificating….making sculptures out of toilet roll holders and cooking….absolutely had enough of cooking….the sun’s coming out, we want a holiday!
It's a difficult topic to tackle as economically it's crucial to the economic recovery of Europe, and if we're honest with ourselves we know that we're taking a risk getting on a plane, going to areas where there will inevitably be a risk of contagion from thousands of complete strangers from all over the world doing the same thing, and although we may convince ourselves that we'll make every effort to take care, that the chances of actually catching Covid-19 are increasingly slimmer.... we know in our hearts that we should really be sensible and not go on holiday this year......but we're going to do it anyway.
Images of the public flocking to beaches and bars have drawn condemnation worldwide this week; three towns in Brittany in France shut their beaches on Wednesday because of the "unacceptable" failure of people to observe social-distancing rules, the council of Southend in the UK faces fierce criticism as thousands packed the beaches enjoying 25 degree temperatures and Barcelona council was criticised for allowing the public to use its beaches unchecked, when still in phase zero of the de-escalation process in Spain.
Why? Because all local and national authorities are feeling the pressure from businesses desperate to get back to work, from economic advisers warning of impending world recession, massive job losses, economic disaster on an unprecedented scale……….. and the fear of being blamed for a deep economic disaster is forcing heads of nations to play roulette with the lives of their own residents in the name of economic recovery.
Europe accounts for 50% of the global tourism market and tourism is a crucial sector supporting a pyramid of ancillary businesses who all benefit from the money it generates.
Spain has been reluctant to confirm its intentions, preferring to ensure that the virus is under control and Spaniards will be protected should foreign visitors be allowed in once again, but the desire of Italy and Greece to get back to business has galvanised the Government of Spain to finally announce its intention to open its' borders to foreign holidaymakers.
On Saturday Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that there would be "a tourist season in Spain" this year, and that the Government planned to create "green corridors" to permit not only the movement of Spanish nationals, but also international tourists.
And "from the begining of July" he said, foreign tourists will once more be permitted to enter the country "in secure conditions".
"We guarantee that foreign tourists will incur no risk coming to Spain and that they will not bring the virus to our country, "he said,"There is no competition between health and business because without health there is no business. This is why we will combine support for the sector with the guarantees of full sanitary conditions."
As we already know, internal movement between provinces will occur "at the end of June" when the de-escalation process concludes and Spanish nationals are permitted to move between provinces within the country. At the moment this is planned for the 22nd June.
However, according to fourth Vice president Teresa Ribera, who gave an interview to El Periódico on Saturday, regions of the country which achieve the status of "new normal" after successfully completing phase 3 will be connected by these "green corridors " to other areas of the country and international cities which have also reached an equivalent level of control of the Covid virus will also be linked in at this stage, permitting foreign tourists to enter. This is a contradiction to the statement made by the PM, a situation which has become all too familiar during this Covid crisis, but the PM did NOT mention any dates in his own discourse about the decision to allow in foreign tourists, so all we can presume is that further clarification will follow shortly.
The EU is keen to see Europe re-open
On Wednesday, European Union tourism ministers agreed “to do whatever it takes for the quick and full recovery of European tourism", broadly backing an EU plan which proposes lifting restrictions between member states of "sufficiently similar epidemiological situations," in other words, the same rate of coronavirus infection.
EU member states have discussed the creation of "green corridors" or "travel bubbles" allowing countries with low or sharply declining infection rates to open up either fully or partially to nationals from other countries which represent a lower risk profile until borders are fully re-opened.
This seems to be the path that the Spanish Government is aiming to follow and certainly there has been a considerable level of activity within the Murcian regional tourist board preparing guidance booklets and information posters for all those working in the tourism sector, helping them to offer "safe tourism" options to potential visitors.
The EU's plan also focuses on developing “safe and healthy tourism” with health and safety guidelines for beaches, hotels, campsites, B&Bs, cafes and restaurants, aiming to dually protect not only guests, but also employees through simple and practical measures such as booking swimming pools in advance, stringent social distancing measures, creating low density leisure facilities and restaurants and limiting the use of public areas such as beaches; in some areas councils have already imposed proposed volume limits on their beaches and will allocate entry to their beach on a "first come, first served" ticket basis. Others are proposing to partition their beaches off into zones so that bathers can enjoy social distancing.
Margrethe Vestager, vice-president of the European Commission said this week that "this is not going to be a normal summer, not for any of us. But when we all work together and we all do our part in the ways the Commission is setting out, then we don't have to face a summer stuck at home or a completely lost summer for the European tourism industry."
Spanish tourism sector needs time to prepare
Exceltur is pushing the government to confirm the date from which Spain will open to foreign tourists in order to give businesses working in the sector time to prepare and implement the required safety protocols. Local councils have also been unsettled by the uncertainty caused by the crisis and also have significant measure to implement in order to guarantee the safety of residents, workers and visitors.
So where are we now:
- De-escalation: On Monday Madrid will finally move into phase 1 of de-escalation, two weeks behind the majority of the country, some of which will move into phase two. The de-escalation is unequal throughout the country, some areas (the Balearic and Canary Islands) are three weeks ahead of other regions. Some of the country is still stuck in phase zero. Although in theory the key date quoted by the Government is 22nd June, the PM has reiterated this week that the country will “de-escalate together”, which, should all areas compete the required four phase de-escalation together, could mean that the “new normal” won´t begin until some time in early July. Until it does, NOBODY, even Spanish nationals, is allowed to travel between provinces.
- 14 day quarantine. At the moment the quarantine will expire on 15th June. whether the government will continue with this requirement or not has not yet been announced. The British media on Saturday all made a point of highlighting to readers that this is currently an entry requirement for Spain, as is the requirement of the British Government for anyone returning abroad to self-isolate for 14 days.
- Spain’s borders are closed to non-essential international travellers (that means tourist basically; if you don´t live here, you can´t come in unless you’re engaged in diplomatic or medical work, are in transit or are transporting goods until 15th June.
- The country is in a state of emergency until 7th June. The PM would like to extend that but given the political spaghetti generated by the manoeuvrings to secure the latest extension this week, whether it will actually happen is becoming increasingly uncertain.
- Tourists attempting to currently enter Spain are being turned back at the border; this week 3 Germans were put on a plane and sent home without being allowed to enter for not having a valid reason to be here.
- Flights available to book are few and far between in July, and most of the airlines electing to fly are selecting the Canary and Balearic islands as their chosen destination as cases are lower and there is a greater chance of the islands being open for business than the mainland. Last week Ryanair cancelled multiple flights to Spain for the early part of July.
- It is possible that some countries will be excluded from the "green routes"; the UK is currently a hot candidate for this with 248,293 cases, 35,704 deaths and both new cases and fatalities rates that far exceed those of the European tourist destinations they are likely to want to visit.
- Spain’s own new case rate is decelerating, the number of deaths is diminishing, but there are still new cases on a daily basis and the health Ministry spokesman warns every day that complacency kills and observing the lock-down is vital to bring the virus under control. Cases haven´t risen significantly since the de-escalation began and the Ministry has increased testing, establishing that around 5% of the population of Spain has been exposed to the virus. The fatalities rate has been consistently under 100 a day for nearly a week. On Friday, large swathes of the country was permitted to move forward in the de-escalation process.
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