Employment is fully returning to pre-pandemic levels and temporary employment is being reduced to a minimum, while Exceltur forecasts revenue to grow 7% this year to 168,400 million invoices
The year 2022 was the year of tourism recovery after two “dramatic” years due to the pandemic. This is shown by data from Exceltur, the tourism employers’ association, which calculates that tourism activity ended the year 1.4% higher than that of 2019, with a final value (tourism GDP) of approximately 159,000 million euros. These figures mean that tourism already accounts for 12.2% of the total national GDP, close to the percentages it had before the pandemic after the collapse in 2020 and 2021.
This substantial increase in the sector’s economic activity does not mean an increase in the same business results, warned José Luis Zoreda, Vice President of Exceltur, who pointed out that energy costs have increased by 28% for business people, 17% for supplies and 8, 9% labor costs. According to data from INE, prices in the tourism sector will increase by 6.6% in 2022. In this sense, Zoreda indicated that it is “very difficult” to discern how much of this income improvement is due to a real increase in prices, due to inflation, due to longer stays or changes in the consumption habits of tourists looking for to premium products.
The recovery in activity has also ensured a full recovery of employment in the sector, which has also overcome the high temporary rate thanks to the labor reform allowing permanent-discontinuous jobs, appreciated by the employers’ association. Compared to 2019, 28,000 new jobs have been created to add 1.9 million jobs in the tourism sector. There were barely 4,000 people in ERTE by the end of 2022, Zoreda said.
And this year it gets even better. Exceltur’s forecasts boost tourism activity by 7% compared to 2019 turnover, reaching a turnover of 168,400 million euros by the end of 2023. Despite these good numbers, Exceltur tempered optimism and emphasized that company results are not growing at the same rate, as two years in which 170,000 million euros are no longer coming in, which has led some companies to borrow to get ahead.
The destinations that will benefit most from the sector’s good performance in 2023 will be those cities most focused on international and domestic demand for cultural and nature tourism. This is the case for Madrid, which expects to end the year with a turnover 9.8% higher than that of 2019; Barcelona (8.3%), Andalusian (5.7%) and Valencian (13.2%) urban destinations.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
