English
Español Brexit can decrease tourists in Spain by more than 3 million
On Monday, September 30, a new conference of the Chair ”Peñarroya Tourism on Costa del Sol” of San Telmo Business School took place at the San Telmo facilities in Malaga.
During the event, Javier Ibáñez de Aldecoa Fuster, from CaixaBank Studies Service, offered to more than one hundred attendees the data collected in the tourism sector report for the 2nd Quarter of 2019.
Among other aspects, this report showed that the increasing number of international tourists visiting Spain, above 5.6% from 2010, is slowing down in a meaningful way since last year. In this sense, regardless of Brexit’s effects, it is expected that the increment will be only 2 %. Taking into consideration the possibility of a “no deal” or hard Brexit, it could be lost 3.5 million visitors.
Following the presentation of the report, it was hosted a round table discussion under the title “Financing Hotel Assets and New Actors”. Vicente Fenollar, chief financial officer of the Barceló Group, Juan de la Hera Salvador, corporate finance director of Meliá Hoteles and Juan Molas, president of CEHAT participated in the table, moderated by David Rico director of CaixaBank Hotels & Tourism.
The speakers analyzed a change in trend towards a consolidation stage in the tourism sector. The entry of tourists is moderated, but the offer continues to evolve to a high-end offer. Tourists visiting Spain spend more and more: the average expenditure per person reached 145.3 euros per day in 2018, increasing by 5.4% on previous year. The challenge is to keep the tendency, enhancing the value proposition.
According to the Caixabank Research study, the tourism sector employs 2.4 million people and generated in 2018 about 14 % of the country's economic growth. In this sense, the members of the table reflected on the idea of creating quality tourism that generate job quality.
The objective during the day was to study ways to reach alliances or attract new partners for this thriving sector, in which Spain is the world's second-most popular tourist destination. The professor and director of the Chair “Peñarroya Tourism on Costa del Sol” of San Telmo Business School, Eduardo Olaya, emphasized that the conditions and characteristics of Malaga and the Costa del Sol are favorable to achieve a superior positioning.
