The tourism it regains its cruising speed after the stoppage caused by the crisis. It is expected that the recovery of the sector will be completed in 2023: according to CaixaBank, a great growth is not expected compared to 2022, but an improvement.
In this sense, forecasts indicate that the Tourism GDP will be above 2019 by 2%. In the same way, after years in which jobs were lost due to the slowdown in tourism, there are positive estimates regarding job creation in this sector. Thus, the tourism sector will continue to be a key employment engine for the Spanish economy.
In this sense, in the summer of 2022 the recovery of the tourism sector was surprising, already reaching 95% of pre-pandemic levels. Specifically, Spain received in August the visit of more than 8.8 million international touriststhus recovering nine out of 10 international tourists in 2019.
Furthermore, despite inflation, in August average spending per tourist increased by 119 euros compared to the same month of 2019. In the same way, tourism employment closed November with the best data in its historical series: according to data from the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, the tourism sector closed November 2.45 million affiliated with Social Security.
Thus, during the peak of the month of November, the number of affiliated people was exceeded by 47,215 than in the same month of 2019. According to Deborah Carrer, program manager of the MSc Tourism & Hospitality Management of the business school TBS Education – Barcelona, “The boom in November reaffirms the weight of the tourism sector in job creation in the country, since workers represent 12% of the national economy, and shows that the seasonality of tourism is increasingly real”.
However, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a real recovery in international tourism is not expected before 2024 or 2025. In the same way, despite the positive figures, the global macroeconomic scenario forces the tourism sector to moderate the estimates.
In this sense, the consultation carried out by the Observatory of Tourism Issuer of Spain (Observatur) to 5,000 companies in the tourism sector, indicates that the main threats in the sector are economic rescission and the consequent increase in travel prices. Thus, inflation will force the sector to increase prices to maintain profit margins: despite the 2% increase in GDP, the increase in costs will be a key point in the development of tourism in 2023.
A greener, more digital and more resilient tourism
For more than 40 years the growth of the sector has been promoted, first with tourism strategies of Sun and beach and, later, with strategies focused on the quality. Despite this, the pandemic has brought new challenges that require the sector to adapt to the new formulas. In this context of the necessary transformation of the Spanish tourism sector, at the beginning of November the Spanish Government promoted a proposal for the evolution of the sector within the framework of the sustainable development objectives of the 2030 Agenda.
Thus, the 2030 Tourism Agenda, “gathers a vision of the future of the European tourism ecosystem in the direction of making it greener, more digital, more resilient and responding to the challenges of the next decade”, as reported by La Moncloa. In this way, the EU Competitiveness Council has approved the adoption of a 2030 European Tourism Agenda, promoted by the Government of Spain, with the aim of achieving a more resilient tourism ecosystem by 2030.
In this context of transformation, and with the aim of responding to the needs of the labor market, TBS Education-Barcelona offers its Master’s Degree in Tourism & Hospitality Management, which provides solid training in management, offering theoretical and strategic skills. This course is aimed at young professionals looking to start their careers in the challenging tourism and hospitality sectors.
