2023-10-19 12:41:55
The tourism sector is experiencing its full recovery this year after the collapse due to the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The forecast is that the sector will bring in 183,000 million euros by the end of 2023, 16% more than in 2019, until then a record year. which means that tourism already represents 12.6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But now the European economy is trembling in anticipation that the conflict in the Middle East could lead to new exorbitant price increases.
The uncertainty is very high, but in the tourism sector they are not worried that the reactivation of this conflict could lead to a halt in demand, quite the opposite. After last week the Exceltur employers’ association pointed out that these situations will not seriously affect the sector and could even have a positive effect in competing countries, such as Spain, this Thursday the Association of Airlines (ALA) pointed out in the same sense. The president of ALA, Javier Gándara, pointed out that the impact will be “minimal” because connections to Israel only represent 0.2% of total flights, as already happened when the war broke out between Russia and Ukraine, which represented 2%. .
Traveler record
127 million seats
scheduled to operate in Spain this winter, 12.8% more than in the same season of 2018-2019.
Furthermore, he recalled that at the beginning of 2010 the Arab Spring had a positive impact on tourism in our country because it diverted passengers to Spain, although it also spread a certain fear of flying due to the terrorist threat, so something similar could happen now. transporting European tourists who were planning to travel to Egypt, Tunisia or other countries in the area to Spain for security reasons.
However, the conflict will affect international fuel prices, which would lead to an increase in air ticket prices since they represent almost 30% of airline costs. Despite this, Gándara highlighted that the sector is “accustomed to the volatility of fuel prices”, so they are not very worried about it for now.
For all these reasons, despite the good figures that Gándara presented for air traffic in 2023, the feeling is one of “moderate optimism” due to the geopolitical and economic uncertainty in the short and medium term. “At the moment the figures show the desire to travel and this year will be the year of consolidation of the recovery, with levels even above 2019,” announced the president of ALA at a press conference in Madrid.
The forecast for winter is that the supply of seats will be almost 13% above the 2018-2019 winter season, until now a record, with 127 million seats scheduled to be operated in Spain and with higher increases in the Canary Islands and Andalusia. , where they will exceed 20%. So far this year, the number of air passengers has increased by 1.3%, with a “very positive” summer in which air travelers have also grown by 1.2% compared to the pre-pandemic summer.
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