A key summer for tourism in Barcelona

Barcelona faces this summer campaign as a relative litmus test for the health of its tourism sector, one of the city's main economic engines. It will be the first since the terrorist attacks on Las Ramblas in August of last year, and it will also be the first campaign since the 1-O referendum and the subsequent political collapse that shook the streets of Barcelona. Two elements that conditioned the arrival of tourists to the Catalan capital in the second half of 2017 and that may continue to have much to say in these months of July and August. For this reason, from the Barcelona Hotel Guild, its general director, Manel Casals, admits that this summer will be "special" and adds that there are many clouds of uncertainty looming over the sector.

One of them is the growing pressure and rejection that some political and social groups have championed regarding tourism that they consider massive and invasive to the life of the city. The Barcelona City Council itself, with Ada Colau's Comuns at the helm, has maintained a critical discourse with the activity and has shown itself in favor of setting limits on a sector that, like it or not, contributes close to 15% of the GDP and 9% of the city's employment. The images of graffiti with the slogan "tourist go home" or the controversial actions of Arran against tourism are not the best promotional postcards of the city either, nor are those generated by the conflict at El Prat airport. Last year, the protests of security control workers already sent images of kilometer-long queues and annoyed travelers to the world, and although this year the situation seems calmer, the usual summer strikes by airlines could generate new pressure on the busiest days of activity.

"It is not understood that on the one hand the City Council vetoes in its hotel plan the arrival of a chain like Four Seasons, focused on high-purchasing power tourism, and on the other hand we see that 10,000 illegal tourist apartments are allowed to be legalized," according to the general director of the Barcelona Hotel Guild, Manel Casals

Other threats to Barcelona's tourism come from further afield. For years, the city has been one of the destinations most benefited by the decrease in activity in other more "hot" spots due to political instability such as North Africa or Turkey, and has also received part of the tourism that Paris lost after the jihadist attacks of 2015. But in the last year, the improvement of the situation on the other side of the Mediterranean and Barcelona's visibility as a terrorist target have turned the tables, and the sector now fears that a large part of the tourism that the Catalan capital "borrowed" will disappear. This is the cost, experts point out, of having based a large part of the appeal on a low-price offer, with a clientele much more loyal to the final travel bill than to the destination, and in fact the same consellera of Business and Knowledge and head of the tourism area, Àngels Chacón, warned businesspeople in the sector a few days ago about the impact on Catalonia of the recovery of destinations such as Turkey or Tunisia.

However, the City Council is confident of being able to talk about a good summer campaign and leave behind the drops that political instability generated especially in the last months of 2017. For now, data from the Statistics on tourist movements at borders (Frontur) show that during the first five months of the year, Catalonia received 6,529,377 visitors, 2.1% less than the same period last year. A slight decrease that is expected to recover during the summer months.

In fact, the figures also show that the current picture, despite the points of uncertainty, places Barcelona as one of the leading tourism cities in Europe, and the absolute leader within Spain. According to the Top 100 city destinations Ranking report, prepared by the consultancy Euromonitor International, the Catalan capital is in sixth position among European cities with the highest volume of annual visitors, with 7.6 million arrivals in 2017, and with a forecast to grow to 8.9 million in 2025.

The sector warns, however, that this Barcelona needs a new impulse and advises on the medium-term effects of the reduction in spending that the Barcelona City Council allocates to the promotion of the city abroad. For Casals, "the City Council should multiply by two or by four the money allocated to this promotion precisely after a complicated 2017 for the sector for many reasons." A promotion that, according to the general director of the Barcelona Hotel Guild, should not be aimed at attracting quantity but at attracting quality. In any case, this summer will be a good time to gauge the health of the "Barcelona brand" as a tourist destination and, above all, to see to what extent the city is capable of consolidating the spectacular growth accumulated in the last decade.