Tourism has had a particularly good year in Spain and has once again contributed to the growth of the Spanish economy. But at the same time it has once again generated citizen response in the most crowded destinations. The Exceltur association, made up of 33 of the main companies in the sector, will analyze this and other challenges of the sector in a forum with public and business representatives that will be held on January 23 as a prelude to Fitur. Its executive vice president, José Luis Zoreda, advances some of the points to be discussed.
Is tourism reaching its limit in Spain?
We have some challenges and in some cases a perception of saturation, in others of gentrification, which in our opinion are very clearly due to the uncontrolled growth of illegal tourist homes. They are generating many habitability problems in the sense of increasing rents, sales prices, or, what is worse, the trivialization of neighborhoods where the fruit shop, the hairdresser, the convenience store and, in the best of cases, are disappearing. a souvenir shop appears. This way, that neighborhood is depersonalized and a feeling of loss of quality of life is generated, attributed to the entire tourism sector, when the cause is a disorderly growth of a tourist accommodation profile, which is illegal housing. It is a phenomenon that has gotten out of hand due to very poor regulation and above all due to the attitude of some intermediation platforms that do nothing at all to help comply with the legislation.
Are you considering reporting the platforms that allow illegal tourist apartments?
We have made evident to our public authorities the need to combat this permissiveness with which they operate. The problem is how to ensure compliance with the law. And that is where the platforms have all the escape routes, to the extent that European directives do not require them to ensure compliance with the law before placing the advertisement on their website. And the idea still persists that they are pure bulletin boards, where they are not responsible for anything. When you tell them that they have to check that they comply with the legislation of Barcelona, Lloret de Mar or wherever, they answer that the European directives do not require that responsibility.
Should Spain rethink the tourism model?
We have to rethink growth strategies so that tourism is seen not as a potential problem by some citizen groups, but as an opportunity for progress and improvement of social conditions for everyone. This is the basis of the congress that we are going to hold in January. For many years, the metrics and value of industry success have focused on quantity. The more foreign tourists arrived, the better. We forget that the first tourist market for Spain, by far, is the Spanish. We have to change these metrics and begin to assess the added effect of each of these visitors, change the repositioning of our offer to ensure greater spending and, in the end, greater knock-on effects on destinations.
Do drought and heat due to climate change threaten Spain as a destination? Catalonia has not experienced a lack of water like the current one and in January limitations are planned for the industry if it does not rain.
There is still no established correlation to anticipate that the Mediterranean is in decline as tourism, there is no evidence of translation of tourist flows due to climate. Which does not mean that the risk is there and we have to be responsible and assume more to preserve what we have.
What do they ask of the new Minister of Industry and Tourism?
First, this country will never have any problem with tourist demand. Don't just do more advertising and promotion. It is necessary to reposition the tourist offer so that the measure of success is not breaking record attendances. And even more so when society is questioning us about certain massification. We have to rethink what Spain sells as a country. On the coastal side we need a strong commitment to the reconversion of these destinations. We have wasted Next Generation resources in a distribution of small operations with little driving effect in the most problematic destinations. If they continue to be the great factories of Spanish tourism, let's make big bets on transformation. If there are any fringes of Next Generation, before starting the crusade of an emptied Spain, let's try to protect what could go down if we don't turn it around. Secondly, take seriously the chaos of the uncontrolled growth of illegal tourist housing. And finally, move towards a new governance, with better structured public-private management and with a space for opinion for residents.
