Skift Forum Europe Preview: Spain Is Bullish About the Future of Tourism
Photo Credit: Unsplash / Susan Flynn
Skift Take
Spain's giant tourism industry is likely to bounce back significantly this year, barring new variant disruptions. But identifying and implementing long-term solutions for the sector to evolve sustainably will also be an urgent task.
Skift Forum Europe
Skift Forum Europe was held in London, England on March 24, 2022. Find out about future Skift events through the link below.Visitor numbers have been steadily on the rise for Spain’s tourism sector since the Fall of 2021, in spite of Omicron and rapidly changing entry restrictions across the European Union. This picture is expected to improve further in 2022, as one of world's most visited countries keeps making strides to ease entry.
As of Monday, children between the ages of 12 and 18 who are traveling directly from the UK or Northern Ireland will no longer be required to be fully vaccinated to enter Spain and can instead present a negative PCR test. This opens the door wider for family travel this upcoming spring and summer seasons.
But it’s not just about the recovery of visitor numbers from major source markets. Miguel Sanz Castedo, director general of Turespaña, the tourism office in charge of promoting Spain, told Skift that his destination is currently looking into ways to become more sustainable post-pandemic and that it wants to improve. Out of European Union recovery funds, Spain is investing 3.4 billion euros just in the tourism sector, with more than two billion going toward sustainability projects.
“We want to make sure that the tourist model that we develop with the help of these European funds but also with the help of the private sector, is a model by which we can little by little say the impact of every visitor that comes to Spain has a net positive impact in terms of the environment, in terms of of the social impact on local communities, in terms of economic sustainability,” said Sanz.
Sanz discussed this and other developments — including Turespaña’s new “co-op” marketing campaign model, which has already generated two mill
