If you could take a picture, it would be this: in recent years, the number of tourists traveling to Spain to buy luxury goods has increased faster than the number of backpackers roaming the streets.
These are some of the data that appear in a report by the McKinsey consultancy
So, the high-end tourism segment in Spain from 2015 to 2022 grew at a rate of between 5 and 8% and doubled the rate of general tourism. This business already has a direct economic impact of more than 20,000 million euros, which represents a contribution of close to 1.9% to the country's GDP as a whole. In 2022 alone, high-end tourism attracted six million travelers with high purchasing power to Spain. Seven out of ten were foreigners and eight out of ten spent the night in luxury hotels.
This movement has intensified in the last six years. This has contributed to the improvement of the offer in Spain, from the increase in luxury hotels, which in this period increased by 27%, to the growing diffusion of the number of restaurants with a Michelin star.
The renewed interest in leisure for this group, oriented towards the search for increasingly personalized experiences, as well as the escalation of general tourist flows (20% more between 2015 and 2022) attracted by the purchases of luxury goods, have completed a very favorable panorama for this segment.
In a recent analysis, this time by the consultancy Bain
While the debate about tourismophobia is far from dying down, especially in the most congested tourist centers, the economic data provided by McKinsey confirms that high-end tourism has a multiplier effect on the generation of wealth and added value in the Spanish economy. For example, the impact on culture, shopping and leisure, together with gastronomy and accommodation, is the most notable, as it multiplies by 5, 4 and 3, respectively, the economic contribution compared to that generated by general tourism until reaching a figure of between 8 and 10,000 million euros. In terms of transport and the real estate sector, the high-end ones multiply the wealth by 3 and 2, respectively, compared to traditional tourism, reaching a total impact of 3 million euros. As a Barcelona businessman in the nautical sector confessed, "if you don't attract this more sophisticated group, you won't eliminate them: they will simply go somewhere else".
Challenges remain. On the demand side, a decline in consumption is always possible due to the persistence of geopolitical tensions, while on the supply side, companies must maintain the level even if there is, as now, a shortage of labor
Com va dir Rene Zimmer, director general de Finca Cortesin Hotels
