Alex Trelinski
HOTELIERS on the Costa Blanca are set to lose €200 million because of the UK government imposition of a 14-day quarantine period for tourists returning home.
The claim has been made by Nuria Montes, general secretary of the Benidorm and Costa Blanca hotel association, Hosbec, who put a figure of €150 million on losses in the Benidorm area alone.
Speaking after talks with regional tourism leaders and Valencian president, Ximo Puig, Montes said that the UK quarantine measures would see many hotel rooms left unoccupied.
“I estimate that between 200,000 and 300,000 overnight stays will be lost to our members as a result of the quarantine,” Montes predicted.
Other figures produced by Montes included a projection that 500,000 seats will not be taken up on flights to Alicante-Elche airport, with half of those cuts down to tour operators like TUI scrapping their holiday packages.
She added: “We will see a large cascade of flight and accommodation cancellations if the UK does not back down on the quarantine.”
Montes said that around 15 per cent of the region’s hotels that were planning to reopen for August had changed their minds, while 60 per cent had already reopened.
