The road ahead for the recovery of tourism is going to be a bumpy one

The road ahead for the recovery of tourism is going to be a bumpy one. | EFE

Humphrey CarterPalma04/12/2021 09:52
TW
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It looks like Covid is something we are all going to have to live with in the short to mid term and who knows, perhaps in the long term it will be like the common ‘flu requiring annual jabs.

In the meantime, what is clear there is no quick fix and it is extremely hard for anyone, albeit for personal or professional reasons, to make any secure plans.
And, it is the tourist industry, tour operators, hoteliers, airlines, the whole supply chain which are taking the biggest hit.

Just when everyone was looking forward to a “normal” Christmas, a new variant popped up while Covid cases were already spiking again across Northern Europe. After two steps forward, it was suddenly more than one step backwards.

Governments can bang on about data, tourist numbers and spending etc. Obviously it is up on last year in Spain, the industry was totally paralsyed for most of 2020.

In Spain, tourism represented about 12% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019, tourists spent a total of 5.59 billion euros in October of this year, up from around 864 million euros in the same month of 2020 but still much less than the 8.32 billion euros spent in October 2019.

So there is a long way to go to get the industry back on track and new variants and spikes will continue to deny consumer confidence. Sadly, no one is to blame, it’s the nature of this beast.