TRENDS:SPAIN IS expected to attract about one million more tourists this year, mostly holidaymakers unnerved by turmoil in the Middle East, according to a Reuters report.
Many are northern Europeans re-routing trips from regions that have become natural or political disaster zones. Spain is the world’s third largest tourist destination after France and the United States.
But a Spanish tourism expert says that quality must rise and prices fall for growth to be sustained. “Spain has a lot to offer but we fall short in terms of price-to-quality and legislative control,” Josep Francesc Valls, a tourism expert at the ESADE business school in Barcelona said.
Valls expects foreign arrivals to grow between 2 and 2.5 per cent in 2011, after rising 1.4 per cent to 53 million in 2010 after two years of decline. That could help Spain’s tourism sector recover between 7,000 and 10,000 of the 180,000 jobs lost since the financial crisis began three years ago.
Tourism accounts for 11 per cent of Spain’s GDP, despite the impact of lower travel spending after the recession while the country also battles 20 per cent unemployment, the highest in the eurozone.