Inflation cannot be driven by the desire to travel again after the pandemic. Tourism is on its way to breaking all records this year. The increases in flight ticket, hotel and package prices offered by travel agencies cannot be associated with the main sector of the Spanish economy, which creates the most employment and wealth.. “July occupancy has already surpassed 2019 figures in some regions in terms of profitability,” says Jorge Marichal, president of the Spanish Confederation of Hotels and Hospitality Employers. The return of travelers to pre-covid levels has also brought back an old problem to Spanish cities: overcrowding and problems of coexistence between residents and tourists. Industry forecasts show that 85 million people will visit Spain this year. What is Spain’s capacity to continue adding visitor records?
The main access to the port of Torrevieja (Alicante) closes at 20:00 since last August 2 due to overcrowding and lack of parking.. That same week, the Costa del Sol town of Nerja ordered a temporary closure of the Chíllar river due to the high risk of fire to try to reduce the number of people gathered in the area, following reports from the State Civil Guard’s Seprona. Firefighters and Civil Protection Consortium. In Santiago de Compostela (La Coruña), the City Council is exploring the possibility of imposing a tax on hikers who do not stay overnight, i.e. visitors and pilgrims who only spend a few hours in the city. The Galician capital has also remitted a tourist tax to Xunta for overnight stays, from 50 cents to 2.5 euros per night, depending on the type of establishment. In Spain, only the Balearic Islands and Catalonia tax tourists, and Generalitat Valenciana approved in December that consulates will implement the tax according to their needs from 2024.
For Francisco García Pascual, Doctor of Geography and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Communications at the European University, it is not a question of shrinking this industry, but of managing it better to limit its negative impacts. “Millions of people have joined the world tourism market in the last decade, and this inevitably leads to overcrowding of the most popular destinations,” he notes, assuring that it is the use of public space by tourists that causes tourismophobia. “We should also take into account that it increases the pressure on the housing market and its costs”. An example of this is the provincial capitals, where new construction is more expensive than the 2008 bubble: prices for newly built homes in Barcelona by 11.5%, in Madrid by 9%, in Palma de Mallorca by 4.3%, and according to data from the Appraisal Society San. Sebastian 3.7%.
“The massification of tourism is practically a global phenomenon. Venice is the most extreme example, but tourist flows have increased overall,” says Viola Migliori, southern Europe director of Evaneos, an agency specializing in excursions to unique destinations. . . Some of the most coveted areas of Spain by tourists are found in the Mediterranean, Balearic and Canary Islands.. In some destinations, high temperatures and tourist density are the incongruous note of the goose that lays the golden egg. Spain needs tourism, which is its main sector with 12.2% of GDP and serves to balance the balance of payments and current account deficit. According to the Alliance for Tourism Excellence’s (Exceltur) quarterly report on the Tourism Outlook, tourism contributed 60.8% to the estimated growth of the Spanish economy in 2022. “Reducing these numbers is unrealistic and there is room for them to increase,” says Francisco García Pascual.
For public accounts, the impact of tourism is expected to be even more positive this year. According to the Bank of Spain, The current account surplus, which measures income and payments from goods, services, income and transfer exchanges, posted a surplus of 16.2 billion euros until May.Compared to the 2,000 million deficit it posted in the fifth month of 2022, partly due to “before services and tourism got stronger,” as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) noted in its latest review of world growth.
The industry is aware of the problem
José Manuel Lastra, First Vice-President of the Spanish Confederation of Travel Agencies, recognizes that there are certain overcrowded places, especially in the Balearic Islands and the Costa del Sol.. Since holidays are so common in Spain in July and August, and destinations around the world are promoted, this employers association is committed to adjusting the holiday period more according to the season. “It would be very positive to combine sun and beach holidays with the interior,” he explains. “We recognize that local communities are not a theme park, and that is why we are committed to long-term sustainable tourism,” he says.
Migliori points out that a different distribution of holidays throughout the year will help stabilize the tourist flow and avoid overcrowding. “The goal is for trips to have less impact on the environment and local communities”, To explain. In some places, the only way to protect the environment is to limit and protect the heritage. “Mass tourism in some areas of cultural value can backfire and it will be necessary to somehow limit the number of people who can access it,” says geographer Francisco García Pascual. This is already happening, for example, at the famous Las Catedrales beach in Ribadeo (Lugo), on the beaches of Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park (Almería), from Genoveses to Cala Carbón, in some of Menorca’s coves in Torre. De Río de Oro Beach in Mazagón (Huelva)…
“Tourism must adapt to a new paradigm that will go through the limitation of tourist apartments”Pablo Díaz Luque, professor of Economics at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), explains. Portugal has already banned the opening of new tourist apartments in Lisbon, Porto and much of the country’s coastline. While approval by the building owners community is required, the veto only excludes heavily uninhabited interior areas. “If action is not taken, some destinations may die of success and deteriorate until they lose their attractiveness due to tourism, but in the case of Spain there is still room to achieve that,” says Díaz Luque.
In some cities, such as Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca or Malaga, where neighborhood groups have condemned overcrowding, neighborhood unrest has been palpable for years. The deterioration of some neighborhoods due to mass tourism and drunkenness, the increase in rental prices due to the progress of touristic apartments. It also has an impact on public services due to the lack of personnel to take care of so many tourists in health centers and health centres. This week, Germany’s most widely read magazine, ‘Stern’, repeated this reality in Mallorca in a comprehensive news about the saturation of the island. “Palma has become a theme park for two or three days with visitors coming to party uncontrollably, skipping the hotel, and finally sleeping on the beach. Beyond the best-known spots, Magaluf and El Arenal, we see it in the city centre, in Santa Catalina or El Jonquet. Renting holiday apartments has been banned in the entire city of Palma since 2018, but that doesn’t matter because there are countless irregularities and tenants pay the fines if they get it”, denounced Maribel Alcázar Palma, president of the Federation of Neighborhood Associations.
“The Balearic Islands’ tourism tax applied since 2016 – officially called ecotasa – This has had no effect on preventing deterioration or the undesirable effects of tourism.. Avoiding the mass tourist arrival is not a deterrent, and in the end, the citizens of the islands pay for the economic effects: GDP per capita is below the national average and we are one of the communities with the highest inflation. fifth lowest paid autonomous community. Nobody buys an apartment in Mallorca, and many residents and workers who come to work in tourism are forced to live in caravans and cars, as we see in the Ciudad Jardín or Estadio Balearic neighborhoods,” he explains.
Benidorm, example
“Benidorm is a destination of approximately 38 km2, which receives approximately 10 million tourists annually and has a population of approximately 69,800.. It was a project that always planned to attract tourists, and it developed by implementing very successful regeneration and sustainability strategies. Its vertical nature with tall buildings means that the degradation of the area is not as great as in more dispersed urbanisations. There are more than 90 km of cycle paths, pedestrian areas… If there were ten cities along the Mediterranean like Benidorm, the degradation of the Spanish coast could have been avoided”, says Arturo Crosby, co-director of the sustainable destination management specialist course and innovation, tourism at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
Crosby, most cities They are not ready to receive large numbers of tourists, and even fewer are small towns and natural environments, because these are unplanned vulnerable environments. nor are they ready to welcome large numbers of visitors, so the solution to overcrowding does not involve diverting tourists from one place to another, as in domestic or rural tourism. “Zorita de los Canes (Guadalajara) has only 70 inhabitants but can get 1,000 visitors a day during summer days, which is very impressive, so they decided to create a river park, a load capacity that charges park and entry (10 Euros). ), but with good bonuses if customers eat at least one meal and drink per person at the municipal restaurant,” he says.
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For this expert, the solution to overcrowding is not easy or quick, but it involves a combination of factors: limited capacity and dialogue between relevant agents., neighborly, are held in Bordeaux (France), as are institutions and businessmen in the sector. He does not disregard tourist taxes, but believes they are insufficient unless investment is made to reduce demand. Located at the eastern tip of the Himalayas, Bhutan has a travel tax of $250 per person per day in high season and $200 in low season. Something similar happens in Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, where you have to pay $100 to enter as a foreigner.