Spain Poised for Near-Record Tourism Year in Boost to Economy
Fuente: Bloomberg | 19/07/2022
- Recovery in visits may raise growth forecasts for 2022
- Record inflation and travel chaos isn’t denting tourism boom
Undeterred by European airport chaos and double-digit inflation, visitors are flocking back to Spain’s sun-drenched beaches in near-record numbers.
So much so that tourism, which represents about 13% of the euro zone’s fourth-largest economy, is on track to fully recover a year earlier than expected. That would lift prospects for the nation which faced the region’s deepest contraction when the pandemic struck in 2020.
“Tourism has exceeded the best of expectations -- until recently it was difficult to think we could have returned to 2019 levels,” Carlos Cuerpo, head of the Spanish Treasury, said in an interview. “Beyond a growth revision, what’s important is the positive expectations we are seeing.”
Cuerpo reckons that the strength of the tourism upturn in the first summer without health restrictions could raise growth expectations for the year as a whole. That would help repair the damage from the travel slump in a country that, in the year before the pandemic, notched up by far the most nights spent by international guests in the region.
