Barcelona will end the year with 85% of hotels open

The crisis caused by the pandemic has not yet been overcome in the tourism sector, but recovery is beginning to look a little closer. Barcelona, a city dominated by international visitors, has seen tourists return to the city this summer, while hotels that had been closed for months were raising their shutters. Currently, 60% of hotels in the Catalan capital have opened and this figure is expected to rise to 85% by the end of the year. Progress in vaccination, the gradual repeal of restrictions and an intense calendar of fairs in this last quarter explain this reactivation.

According to data from the Barcelona Tourism Observatory, the city closed the summer with a total of 1.9 million tourists, 184.1% more than in 2020, but 62% less than in 2019, a record year for the sector, when 5.2 million visitors were attracted during the summer months and 12 million throughout the year. Tourist spending has also improved considerably compared to the previous summer, with 717.6 million euros, an increase of 182%.

The recovery of activity in the sector has also been evident in the evolution of the labor market. This August was the first month in which the hospitality industry generated net employment since February 2020. Likewise, during the summer months, almost four times more contracts were signed in the tourism sector than during the same period in 2020, with more than 24,000, representing 11% of the total contracts formalized in all of Barcelona.

"We are halfway between 2019 and 2020, but, finally, an intense reactivation of the sector is taking place," says the first deputy mayor of the Barcelona City Council, Jaume Collboni. In this reactivation, congresses and business trips will be one of the keys to finally boosting the tourism sector, as highlighted by the president of Turisme de Barcelona, Eduard Torres. During this last quarter of 2021, the city will host about thirty congresses, such as the IAPAA leisure fair, the Automobile Barcelona, the Smart City Expo World Congress, Tomorrow.Mobility World Congress and Puzzle X. In addition, next year, according to Torres, will be one of the best in terms of fairs in recent years, with key episodes to gauge the health of the sector after the pandemic, such as the return of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) and the grand premiere of Integrated Systems Europe (ISE).

In this transitional summer, international tourists have once again surpassed domestic ones, representing more than 70% of visitors. Despite this, the COVID crisis has managed to attract more tourists from the rest of Spain to the Catalan capital, one of the objectives that the City Council has pursued for years. In fact, national visitors were the first group in terms of overnight stays during the months of June and July, ahead of other nationalities such as the French, Italians, and Germans. During August, the French already occupied the first position, but Spaniards remained in second place and, moreover, during this month the global number of domestic tourists achieved throughout 2019 has already been surpassed.

The Barcelona brand resists

Barcelona has positioned itself as the first city in all of Spain with the highest number of visitors staying in hotels during August, with 442,028, ahead of Madrid, which reached 394,085, and the preferred choice for international tourists. Likewise, it has also registered better performance compared to other cities in the country in terms of unemployment, with a reduction of 35% compared to 2020, above the state average (-21.8%).

"The Barcelona brand resists, it is well positioned," defends Torres, who sees the Next Generation funds as an opportunity to support a sector that, although it is beginning to recover, has just gone through a complicated season. One of the initiatives that Turisme de Barcelona wants to promote with these resources is a hub that analyzes all the data generated by tourists, with the aim of interacting better with them, from the moment they decide to visit the Catalan capital until they return home.