The comment among those who can afford a vacation is recurring: "Everything is very expensive this year." And it is not a simple feeling. The summer in Spain has never been as onerous as this season, which is already entering its final stretch. The price of hotels in July has set a historical record, as published by the INE this week, gasoline has reached prices never seen to date and plane tickets in Europe have risen an average of 22% compared to the same month last year. 2019, according to recalculated Eurostat data.
But while some celebrate it by stating that this is the path to follow so that Spain does not compete on price with other tourist markets, but on quality, for part of the population spending a week on vacation in their own country has become a luxury. Has Spain, a world tourism mecca, become too expensive for Spaniards?
Accommodation, transport, restaurants, activities... All the analyzes point to a strong rise. "These are prices more designed for a foreigner or for natives with high purchasing power," sums up Josep Maria Raya, professor at Tecnocampus (Pompeu Fabra University) and director of the Center for Research in Tourism at the Maresme University School.
Taking as reference an analysis by the tourism consultancy Mabrian, which has monitored the rates offered by 15,000 hotels between the first week of June and the last week of September, a four-star hotel in Spain –the type of accommodation with the most users– costs average 154 euros this summer –see graph–. This represents 17% more than in 2019, the year prior to the covid crisis that the sector takes as a reference, explains Carlos Cendra, manager of Mabrian. The average price of a plane ticket to fly to Spain during July, also counting internal flights between cities in the country -Cendra continues-, reaches 200.56 euros. If we apply the increase observed by Eurostat (22%) to the plane ticket and add the cost of a week in a four-star hotel, vacations this season are 19% more expensive than four years ago. An increase that companies in the industry attribute to the rise in energy, labor and input costs, of between 27% and 30% in total, says Juan Molas, president of the Mesa del Turismo business association.
However, not all tourists suffer equally from this increase. The United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Nordic countries, Italy and the Netherlands are the main sources of tourists for Spain, which in 2019 received more than 83 million foreign travelers – thus becoming the second most visited country in the world – and this year is on track to equal or exceed the record.
These are citizens with an average salary or a family income higher than the Spanish, no matter how much their economies have also experienced the rigors of inflation and the rise in interest rates. So that the 154 euros for accommodation mentioned or the 114 euros that a hotel room in Salou cost on average last month (INE data) do not entail the same effort for the thousands of French or English tourists who arrive in this town from the Costa Daurada every summer than for the Aragonese, the Basques, the Valencians or the Catalans (50% of their tourism is autochthonous) who also tend to fill its beaches. The average salary in Spain is 20.9% below the EU average (2,302 euros gross per month), as Adecco recalled a few days ago, and all the main tourist source markets enjoy higher salaries, as well the British – about 2,986 euros in 2022 according to the National Statistics Office of the United Kingdom.
Even more relevant is disposable family income. The accumulated increase of this in Spain has been 4.6% between 2019 and 2022 (it falls -0.32% in 2020, increases 3.1% in 2021 and 3.7% in 2022 ), while accumulated inflation was 11.4%, highlights UAB professor Josep Oliver. As for accumulated savings, it has been fading and in 2022 it already fell significantly – from 7.9% it reached a peak of 17.5% in 2020, while last year it fell to 7.2%. The latest report on the situation of households from the Bank of Spain estimates the loss of purchasing power of families between 2020 and 2022 at 4.5%.
The INE survey of living conditions also reflects a slight growth in citizens who say they cannot afford a week of vacation away from home after relegation exercises –leaving aside the year of confinement–. If in 2019 it was 33.4% of the population, in 2022 it was 33.5% –1.8 points more than in the previous year–.
With these wickerwork, homes reach the current summer, the most expensive on record. The companies in the sector identify some customer strategies to adapt the pocket, such as reducing the days of stay. "If before with a family you occupied a hotel room or a camping bungalow for two weeks, now you need two or three families," says Xavier Guardià, spokesman for the Federation of Hospitality and Tourism of the province of Tarragona, as an example. Business associations also point to a reduction in spending on ancillary activities, such as eating out or shopping. Available money tends to be concentrated in transportation and lodging. “Services with inelastic demand, such as flights or hotels, are the ones that benefit the most from this price increase; instead, once you pay this, you have less money for restaurants or shops”, comments the economist Guillem López Casasnovas. He has also observed him this summer in Menorca, where he is from and where he spends some time. “The price of a night in a hotel is very high, but occupancy is high, and on the other hand, restaurants complain that they have fewer customers”, he underlines.
Some real-time data also indicates that Spaniards are traveling somewhat less these months. Ricardo Fernández, general director of Destinia, comments that the reservations of citizens for the country itself have been reduced by 5% compared to last summer, and for August reservations to travel abroad have also decreased.
This is not a phenomenon exclusive to Spain, as argued by CaixaBank Research economist Javier Ibáñez de Aldecoa in a recent study on tourism inflation. Italy, Greece or Portugal have in turn had strong price rises, to the point that Greek citizens lament the difficulties in paying for a vacation on their famous islands, reports the country's press. In Italy, in turn, there has been a boom in people who spend their summers in neighboring Albania, which is much cheaper... thus pushing up prices for Albanians. The heads and tails of the holidays.
