Tourism closed 2023 in historic numbers and faces 2024 with optimism at a general level. However, the president of Exceltur and CEO of Meliá, Gabriel Escarrer, has demanded from the Government today, in a forum of the business organization held on the eve of the Fitur international fair in Madrid, that it is necessary to act "with a vision of the State." and strengthen public-private collaboration pathways. For Escarrer, it is essential to promote “strong investment” in the main engine of the Spanish economy.
“In the absence of this Perte, we believe that strong investment must be promoted” to “improve our competitiveness and focus it on the objectives that we set for the period 2024-2030”, and that these “facilitate transformative processes”, he stated. the businessman in the presence of the Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu.
Escarrer has regretted the distribution of European funds and the absence of a specific Perte for the sector which, as José Ignacio Goirigolzarri, president of CaixaBank, highlighted minutes later, will grow next year twice as much as the national GDP. According to the businessman, the aid linked to the recovery plan has had “little impact” on companies.
Gabriel Escarrer has proposed a roadmap to promote the sector focused on four axes. The first, to alleviate spaces and cities that are overcrowded, promoting “regions that need tourism, like emptied Spain.” Secondly, avoid the trivialization of destinations, since “we have some outstanding cities that little by little we are underestimating.” Also promote greater sustainable awareness in tourism companies. And finally, create a public-private collaboration that focuses on “improving” environmental and social sustainability.
Escarrer believes that the Government and, specifically, the Secretary of State for Tourism, should be a “guarantor” and promote “policies that the tourism sector deserves.” To this end, he has demanded to recover the Interministerial Tourism Commission, an example ideally replicable at the three levels of administrations: state, regional and local.
Hereu, for his part, congratulated the companies on the 2023 figures, but asked for self-criticism and set sustainability and digitalization as the challenges of the sector.
One of the problems repeatedly cited in the forum was the degradation of “social perception and recognition” of what tourism represents in the various territories. To try to stop it, Escarrer has called for "pursuing with the greatest force all those phenomena, such as the uncontrolled growth of tourist housing or bad labor practices, which have a distorting and disturbing effect on the image of tourism and are causes of growing citizen disapproval." about the benefits he perceives of the sector.”
At the government level, Exceltur considers it “unavoidable” to address an “organic and internal management restructuring of organizations such as Turespaña and especially in the Segitur society.”
