22 Mar, 2021 @ 18:30
1 min read

Low expectations: Hopes for a return of tourism to Spain but at 50% of previous levels

Maria Reyes Maroto Illera

SPAIN’s Tourism Minister is hoping for a return of tourism but has set her sights low at 50% of normal levels.

Maria Reyes Maroto said: “Maybe the ideal goal is … to get half of the tourists we had in 2019. This, for the industry, would be an achievement.”

Last year the country welcomed an impressive sounding 19 million foriegn tourist but this was 80% down on the more than 80 million who visitors who landed on Spanish shores in 2019.

Maria Reyes Maroto Illera
Maria Reyes Maroto

It was the lowest number since 1969.

The effect on the Spanish economy was stark. In 2019 tourism accounted for 12% of gross domestic product (GDP). Last year this figure had plunged to between 4-5% due to the coronavirus travel restrictions.

The Spanish government has been pushing for international vaccine passports in a bid to restart the tourism economy. At the moment it is relying on an EU scheme to be introduced, but is investigating alternative plans which would allow Britons who have been given the COVID jab to visit.

Dilip Kuner

Dilip Kuner is a NCTJ-trained journalist whose first job was on the Folkestone Herald as a trainee in 1988.
He worked up the ladder to be chief reporter and sub editor on the Hastings Observer and later news editor on the Bridlington Free Press.
At the time of the first Gulf War he started working for the Sunday Mirror, covering news stories as diverse as Mick Jagger’s wedding to Jerry Hall (a scoop gleaned at the bar at Heathrow Airport) to massive rent rises at the ‘feudal village’ of Princess Diana’s childhood home of Althorp Park.
In 1994 he decided to move to Spain with his girlfriend (now wife) and brought up three children here.
He initially worked in restaurants with his father, before rejoining the media world in 2013, working in the local press before becoming a copywriter for international firms including Accenture, as well as within a well-known local marketing agency.
He joined the Olive Press as a self-employed journalist during the pandemic lock-down, becoming news editor a few months later.
Since then he has overseen the news desk and production of all six print editions of the Olive Press and had stories published in UK national newspapers and appeared on Sky News.

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