The Covid-19 health crisis has had a strong impact on the Catalan business fabric, especially in the tourism sector. As a consequence of the pandemic, freelancers, SMEs and entities have seen their activity reduced to a minimum or even paralyzed, a fact that has put their viability and the jobs of thousands of professionals against the ropes.
[subscribe_newsletter_esp]With the aim of covering the liquidity needs of companies and also preserving jobs, the ICF has activated, since the outbreak of the crisis, multiple financing solutions to face this reality. Specifically, the entity makes available to the economic fabric more than 1,100 million euros in the form of loans and guarantees with a double objective: to finance working capital and ensure jobs.
Within the tourism sector, one of the companies that the ICF has financed is Atrápalo. With barely twenty years of activity, Atrápalo, one of the first start-ups of the ecosystem created in Barcelona, is today one of the main portals for promoting leisure, culture, tourism and restaurant offers, with operations in nine countries, seven active business lines and more than eight million registered users.
Covid-19 has had a strong impact on its business from three points of view: the practically total halt of activity, the management of cancellations and, consequently, the return of a large part of the income generated during the pre-pandemic stage, and the business and consumer uncertainty surrounding this health crisis. In this context, and with the aim of obtaining the necessary liquidity, solvency and security to face a situation as complicated as this, Atrápalo requested the "ICF - Crèdit COVID-19" loan from the ICF.
As Luis Alonso, Financial Director of Atrápalo, states, thanks to this loan "we are prepared for whatever may come in the future and we have been able to get through this whole pandemic tsunami."
The ICF, as Catalonia's public bank, continues to support the economic fabric to finance projects that allow building a sustainable future in which growth and innovation are the backbone of the economy and companies.