Tourism exceeds pre-pandemic figures and as soon as once more contributes 12% of GDP and employment in Spain | Economy | EUROtoday

Add and proceed for the tourism sector. The return of tourists to Spain, just like the extraordinary rebound in exercise because the reminiscence of the pandemic has receded, have been realities identified for a very long time. But it remained to be seen how this translated into the macroeconomic actuality of the nation. And this Thursday the National Institute of Statistics (INE) has proven that this exercise represented nearly 12% of complete employment in 2023 and that it exceeded that share in contribution to GDP. In different phrases, the hole opened by Covid was definitively closed and the sector returned to the purpose it was earlier than the confinements and mobility restrictions arrived that turned every part the other way up.

Foreign tourism in Spain skilled a virtuous cycle that began in 2012 and reached its peak in 2019, after seven years of consecutive development. In that interval, we went from receiving 57.7 million vacationers in 2012 to 83.7 million in 2019, which represented a median annual improve of three.7 million guests. All of this boosted the contribution of the totally different vacationer actions to the GDP in Spain till it reached its peak in that very same yr, with a contribution of 154,487 million euros, 12.4% of the entire GDP, and a contribution of two.72 million jobs. from work to employment, 12.9% of the entire. The pandemic and its devastating results on tourism sank these indicators by half in 2020, with lower than 65,000 million euros and a couple of.2 million, and it took one other three years to get better earlier ranges.

This could be seen within the newest replace of the Tourism Satellite Account, made public by the INE, which upwardly revises the information akin to the three-year interval between 2021 and 2023 because of the variation of the nationwide accounts for these three years. The statistics present a rise in nominal GDP of 13,184 million euros. In this fashion, the revised contribution of tourism to the Spanish economic system was 184,002 million euros in 2023, this represented 12.3% of GDP, 0.9 factors greater than in 2022. Regarding the contribution to employment, that is estimated at 2.56 million jobs, 11.6% of complete employment.

In the recomposition of the burden of tourism within the Spanish economic system, the exponential improve in international tourism has performed a number one position, which closed 2023 with 85.7 million arrivals and will attain 95 million by the tip of this yr, in line with the primary official estimates. In the three years after the collapse, the variety of journeys made by these vacationers grew by 173%, whereas the variety of in a single day stays elevated by 142% and was near 615 million in a single day stays. The sturdy advance, nonetheless, was not sufficient to surpass the stays registered in vacationer lodging by residents in Spain, which elevated by 15% in the identical interval to a complete of 643 million in a single day stays.

The up to date knowledge exhibits a totally totally different spending sample between international and nationwide vacationers, though it converges on lodging as the costliest merchandise. The Tourism Satellite Account exhibits that sleeping in a room, whether or not in a lodge, housing for vacationer use or residence, represents 26.8% of the expenditure {that a} international vacationer has to make, a far cry from the 17% that it represents. the service of drinks and meals or the 13.6% that represents air transport.

In the case of nationwide vacationers, the costliest merchandise can also be lodging, with 34.3% of the entire price range, carefully adopted by meals and beverage service, with 33.2%. In the latter case, air transport is changed by spending on journey businesses, which quantities to 10% of the price range. The common worth of resorts has skyrocketed by 42% within the final 4 years to a historic common of 163 euros per room per evening between January and October 2024 in comparison with 115 euros in 2019.