The fall of the industry and the record summer increase the weight of tourism in the economy

By land, sea and air. The spectacular recovery of international tourism last summer has been the key for the main engine of the Spanish economy to compensate for the depression in industrial activity.. Demand has absorbed the rise in prices, adjusting budgets but without giving up their vacations: hotel occupancy has reached maximum levels and airports, cruise ships and railway operators have raised their activity figures to double digits.

Thus, in 2023 tourism will continue the same role of “supporting growth” with which the Bank of Spain has described it since the recovery of 2022.. The evolution of the Spanish economy as a whole last year was already driven more by the reactivation of visits by international travelers than by industrial activity.. In 2023 take the same path. Already before the summer, while the profits of industrial companies sank by 40% until June, tourism contributed a balance of 5.5 billion euros to the balance of payments, with growth rates of 16% in income and 12% in payments while non-tourist goods and services showed a surplus of 600 million.

Your contribution is being decisive in improving the financing capacity of the economy. So much so that while they highlight its great moment, investment banks and economists point it out as a risk. “Tourism represents a tenth of the total production of services in the Spanish economy, which represents a potential weakness,” indicated the rating agency S&P when analyzing the health of the Spanish economy..

For CaixaBank Research, dependence on tourism has been positive in 2023 but it may not be so positive next year due to the contraction in spending promoted by the European Central Bank and the poor situation of the two main clients: the United Kingdom and Germany.. “We expect the headwinds to come into play especially towards the end of 2023 and during 2024, a year for which we expect positive but more moderate growth in tourism GDP due to the complex macroeconomic outlook, greater price competition from other destinations in the Mediterranean, and the risk that both domestic and European tourism will once again travel to more distant destinations,” explains its analyst David Cesar Heymann.

Perhaps a contraction of the main economic engine with other sectors such as the industrial sector in full depression since 2021 due to the energy crisis will reactivate the debate that was opened precisely then, when institutions such as CEOE or the Elcano Institute demanded a change in the productive model that has not occurred..

At Funcas, Elisa Chulia indicates that the sector has learned from shocks such as the pandemic, but that it will not be easy to replace English and German tourists with others from third markets.. “The productive model is a debate that already occurred in 2011 due to the excessive weight of construction. Now we have had a golden opportunity to execute it with European funds but it gives the impression that this is not the case,” he laments.. “As long as this continues, the only thing we can do is be grateful for the power of the tourism sector.”

In fact, 2023 will be a new record year in terms of tourism income, a progression that resumes the pre-pandemic trajectory.. Until June, at the threshold of the high season, there were already 35.6 billion, 7 billion more than in the same period of the previous year.. And, thanks to the fact that national tourism has maintained demand along with the boom in foreign tourism, the peak of the season this summer has been so high that it has even sparked debate in the sector itself about the need to regulate capacity limits. of the industry in territories that are bordering on saturation, such as the Balearic Islands.

The summer of 2023 has been one of intense activity in all means of transport, with nearly 100 million trips calculated by the General Directorate of Traffic. In August, Aena airports received nearly 30 million passengers, 10% more than last year, which has supported a 19% growth in activity at the network manager despite the escalation in airline prices.. Activity has been especially explosive in cruise ships, a means of transport that is growing extraordinarily in the ports of Barcelona, Valencia, Palma and A Coruña.. In total, cruise ships disembarked 1.2 million passengers in ports last August, 65% more than a year ago. And in the case of the railway, high-speed long-distance passenger transport also grew by double digits, with which companies such as Renfe, Ouigo or Iryo benefited from the tourism boom at a higher rate than in other years..

In total, according to the National Statistics Institute, the total expenditure made by international tourists visiting Spain in July reached 13,853 million euros in July, which represents an increase of 16.4% compared to the same month in 2022 and a 16% above that of the same month of 2019.

The strong growth of this item is due more to the increase in prices than to the demand of travelers. While the average expenditure per tourist rose to 1,367 euros, 4.4% more, the average daily expenditure grew by 9%, to 185 euros.. This difference is explained because, without giving up vacations, tourists have shortened their stay in Spain to an average of 7.4 days.