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ARCHIVED - Spanish Prime Minister says tourism does not face lack of demand but lack of mobility
The Prime Minister says tourism begins with vaccination
Any hopes that the Spanish tourist industry might be able to enjoy a semblance of normality this summer were flattened somewhat this week when Pedro Sánchez, the President of the national government, told the World Tourism Organization that his top priority is to vaccinate the domestic population and prepare tourism for the future.
The PM explained that Spain is working on a 3-axis plan; protect, transform and advance, but everything depends on achieving high levels of protection through vaccination of the resident population first and the Spanish government is working on different plans for both domestic and residential tourism.
The President made it clear that although he is ready to work towards the recovery of the tourism sector, and views the tourism sector as an important sector for the country, providing 12% of GDP, that, “Tourism recovery begins with vaccination. And full recovery, with full vaccination. Total and massive ".
"Only massive vaccination can open the doorway to the pathway of normality that we all desire, " he said.
His words have been misquoted, as although the implication inherent in what he has said is that Spain must protect its own population first, the tourism sector must focus on building for the future and this year domestic tourism will necessarily be more important to the recovery of the economy than international tourism will be, due principally to the lack of international mobility caused by the coronavirus, he DIDN´T say that Spain would not be opening to foreign tourists or that foreign tourists would not be welcome, as is being quoted in some media sources.
However, while Spain will continue to make progress towards being able to resume international tourism, the reality is that the immunization program is going to take longer than has previously been estimated, due principally to supply problems.
In the meantime, Sr Sánchez called on hotels and businesses related to the sector to use the intervening period to implement the changes to their infrastructures and working practices which will be necessary in order to resume business when the situation improves sufficiently, and improve their competitivity in the future, adding that vaccination is the only way to achieve the “normality” which everyone aspires to restore.
The government has made millions of euros available to the sector in order to modernise the sector and invest into the recovery of the sector, to support businesses worst affected by the problems to date, as well as continuing to support the ERTE temporary redundancies scheme to prevent businesses being forced to pay out for redundancies now and enable them to maintain their existing pool of skilled staff when their activities resume, which he is confident will be rapid once the virus has been beaten, with Spain at the forefront of demand. However, "the problem is not one of demand, but of mobility, " he said.
Spain has insisted that those arriving in the country provide a PCR test and has currently banned British nationals, the largest market for Spain, from entering the country due to the "British variant" of Covid-19. Dozens of countries have mobility orders in place and the sector expects a complicated year due to the emergence of new variants, such as the "British variant", "the Brazilian variant" and the "South-American variant".
The latest government data show that so far 1.1 million doses of coronavirus vaccine have been administered (1,103,301 as of Thursday afternoon), providing a first stage of immunization just a tiny percentage of the population (46.94 million).
Predictably, hotel owners and chains are less than enthusiastic about the comments made. The Hosteltur association considers that Sr Sánchez should devote his efforts to speeding up both the vaccination program and the efforts to curb the spread of the virus during the current third wave of contagion, and to providing help to businesses in order to make it possible for them to retain staff.
🔴EN DIRECTO
— La Moncloa (@desdelamoncloa) January 19, 2021
El presidente del Gobierno, @sanchezcastejon, participa en la 113ª Reunión del Consejo Ejecutivo de la @UNWTO a la que también asiste la ministra de @mincoturgob.#RestartTourism https://t.co/TpqjcJ7aWH
But although the lack of direct financial hand-outs is not what the tourism sector wants, which is more direct aid for businesses to compensate for the losses of last year rather than money to invest into an uncertain future, the same demands made by every business sector hit by the crisis, there is no doubt that the attempt to resuscitate the tourism sector last summer was not only a dismal failure, but also resulted in the second wave of the virus in the autumn, and now the third, taking the country from a point at which the virus was almost under control back to a tipping point which allowed it to gain a significant foothold and continue to destroy the business prospects of many other business sectors by prolonging and intensifying its spread.
We know by now that international travel facilitates the spread of any variants and that any contact provides an opportunity for contagion; it’s only logical that as little as we like to accept it, we shouldn´t be travelling or taking holidays until a sufficient level of the population has been immunised to halt the pressure being placed on our health services and economies by this virus.
Last summer, after the Government bowed to the intense pressure of the tourism sector to permit hotels to open after 21st June and the population to enjoy their holidays, the international summer tourism season was a failure, as once infection rates started to increase in August, country after country banned its citizens from travelling to Spain and even establishments catering for the national market struggled to make ends meet for a couple of miserable months in the summer, while at the same time permitting the virus to spread unchecked through the population.
The short-term economic gains were hardly worth the investment required to even open these premises, which had spent thousands adapting to meet the demands for safe tourism and by the end of November most had been forced to close again by the second wave.
The tourism statistics for last year are undoubtedly catastrophic (see: International tourism decimated in Spain last year; 90 percent drop in November), and there is no hiding from the economic and employment implications of tourism effectively being cancelled this year, but the long-term scenario should the virus continue to pressure health services unchecked, is also unthinkable.
But at least common sense is finally being spoken instead of the endless attempts to placate the population and tell them what they want to hear. Yesterday the British Home Secretary, Priti Patel warned UK holidaymakers that they should not start thinking about booking holiday breaks for Easter or the summer.
Speaking at the Downing Street press conference, she said: “It is far too early to speculate around restrictions such as the point (in response a journalist questioning whether the public could book holidays for Easter or the summer) you’ve just made, should people be booking a holiday.”
She added that for now, “we are in a lockdown - the public should be staying at home,” and "Our focus of course, with regards to borders and travel, people should not be travelling (now) unless of course it is absolutely critical and essential."
Even the normally ebullient and optimistic Boris Johnson refused to be drawn on when restrictions would be lifted, and refused to make any commitment about when the public could expect to see an end to lockdown, and with the health service struggling to cope with an avalanche of patients and record deaths, the UK government certainly seems to be trying hard to hammer home the message that considerable sacrifices must be made and pleasures foregone in order to defeat the virus, and that will include holidays. The UK Government had no qualms about closing the tourism corridor to the Canary Islands when it feared that variants could be carried to the UK by returning travellers or of imposing a total travel ban or flights ban when it fears its own citizens are at risk. The ban on flights from Portugal imposed last week due to fears that the Brazilian or South-American variants could spread to the UK through Portugal is a clear illustration of this.
Although European Union officials agreed yesterday that borders between EU countries must remain open, there is an increasing reluctance to allow in non-essential travellers from outside areas by member states and as fears grow about the spread of mutations which could potentially be less effective against the vaccines currently available, so do the calls to limit the entry of travellers from countries in which variants of the virus are currently known to be spreading. Earlier this week the president of the Madrid Region called for flights from Brazil and South America into Madrid to be stopped due to the variants situation.
Madrid is the area of Spain believed to be worst affected by the “British Variant” and has the highest number of confirmed cases identified so far.
On Friday Fernando Simón, the head of the Centre for co-ordination of alerts and emergencies finally admitted that the “British variant” is spreading through Spain and “by the middle of March” would be the dominant strain in Spain, a much more contagious variant than the dominant strain at the moment which has lead to the current UK lockdown, high level of cases, hospitalisations and deaths.
At the moment, there are many impediments in the way of non-essential travel; British travellers are blocked from entering Spain until February 2nd unless they are Spanish residents, the British Government has banned non-essential foreign travel until the middle of February; many low-cost airlines have cancelled their flights until the end of March due to the restrictions; and numerous countries have travel bans in place to protect their population.
And this is why the Spanish Government has one plan for domestic tourism and another for international, as although it may not be realistic to build up expectations for a full resumption of international tourism, it is practical to focus on a partial resumption of domestic tourism this summer, based of course, on the progress of the vaccination campaign.
Pedro Sánchez may not have made many friends this week with his forecast for summer tourism, but the rhetoric is changing at the moment, in not only Spain, but even in the UK, the high number of deaths, the pressure on the health service and the long-term economic implications of not bringing the virus under control rapidly supplanting the fear of not being popular with the voters.