Tourism in the region is heading into a historic summer, marked by a surge in travelers and rising prices. The rapid growth across nearly every sector and destination is driving job creation and breaking employment records throughout the entire tourism industry.
This momentum is accelerating even before the peak season starts. Records from the Social Security Institute and the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Tourism show the sector consistently surpassing 2.7 million affiliated workers for three straight months, with employment rising faster than the broader economy.
Major Spanish tourism groups are highlighting not only strong job creation but also the quality of those jobs. The industry’s leading employers, including brands like Meliá, NH, Iberia, Globalia, Riu, and Amadeus, emphasize that temporary roles have receded to historic lows and that permanent contracts now form a dominant share of the labor mix, two-thirds of total contracts when excluding non-permanent discontinuous arrangements.
More jobs, better jobs
Across tourism sub-sectors, total Social Security affiliations reached 2.74 million in June, with roughly 127,000 new positions added above the levels seen in both the previous year and 2019. Tourism now accounts for almost a fifth of all net job creation in the national economy.
Exceltur’s latest quarterly report notes that the growth in tourism activity is driven not only by higher job counts but by increasingly stable and better-quality employment, supported by stronger contracts. The provisional rate for permanent contracts stood at 7.9% in June, well below the pre-pandemic peak of 38.5% in 2019.
Indefinite contracts represented more than two-thirds of the total in June, with roughly 40% full-time permanent and 27% part-time permanent. This is up from the ~49% share before the Covid era. During the period, the market added about 650,000 permanent contracts while reducing temporary ones by around 518,000, underscoring the industry’s push for stable employment patterns.
Three times as many permanent as non-permanent
Additionally, the sector stresses that, amid ongoing political debates during the election cycle about how contracts are counted, the surge in permanent contracts far outpaces non-permanent ones. Permanent contracts now account for about 24.3% of the total employment mix, nearly triple the share of non-permanent arrangements.
Non-continuous contracts, tied to the seasonal nature of tourism, remain common for workers who are employed during peak activity months and receive unemployment benefits during the off-season. The industry argues that greater stability can be achieved through reforms that align labor rules with the seasonality of tourism.
The current government’s labor reform, effective from March 2022, has curtailed the use of temporary arrangements in favor of longer-term contracts. As a result, many companies have shifted toward more permanent employment models, reflecting a broader push for stable careers in tourism.
Industry leaders also point to wage growth as a key factor in attracting and retaining staff. Increases in pay are primarily tied to updating collective agreements in response to inflation and competitive labor markets. Caixabank Research indicates wages in the tourism sector rose by 8.8% from 2019 to May, compared with an 8.2% rise across all other economic sectors.