Spain continues to welcome more visitors and earn more money from tourism than ever before.
SPAIN 2026 WE CONTINUE TO REGISTER RECORDS , OF TOURISTS AND OF REVENUES.
By José Aleixandre Caballero
September – October 26 This type of news that for decades has become something habitual… well, we don’t even flinch, we don’t even care to analyze at what cost???… It shows ever-increasing revenues in the National coffers. And a great “business” for some speculative industrialists in hospitality.
Seen like this and without reasoning beyond reading some macro figures… these results conceal other realities that
give me much to think about, filling me with contradictions and concern, because of the amount of content that the figures contain and that coldly are not considered nor are analyzed or valued in the dimensions that correspond…
I believe that even being considered positive economically today, they do not show the great changes and negative collateral effects they cause, to the majority of Spaniards who suffer the lack of housing and cost of living, due to what the sector generates in tourist destinations and cities in relation to coexistence, costliness and their own qualities in services and prices for consumption…
The sector earns more money due to speculative price increases, but to the detriment of average stays, qualities and levels of services.
It is my modest opinion; very much my own of course… But if I go back in time, my mind remembers and analyzes one of the phrases that arose among a group of hoteliers referring to the Tourist world as: “no matter how they come… and the more the better” is good for the…
“Tourist industry”. Such definitions (which never seemed appropriate to me) I considered very mercantilized and inadequate… inasmuch as all the “actors” in the world of tourism “are people”… human beings yes! …and not merchandise”… today although it pains me, I fear that we have and we want to continue treating a Human business as a “factory of consumers” whom we accommodate in cubicles or spaces, that converted into living quarters with beds are commercialized in the form of rental by the hour”… There are some for almost all tastes, dimensions and prices, with categories or stars unworthy for the most part for those who hold them without scruples, without services without staff without professionals and much less with “permanent qualities”… with totally speculative prices according to demand… suitable for consumers who are “received en masse” thanks to tourist seasons or scheduled MICE events…
Under this type of selective sale by events and economic market segments… Arrived after many years of promotional work now comes as “manna fallen from heaven” from which we must take advantage of everything that “falls”… and so it is… absolutely all those who “come to us… or arrive” are billed…
Up to this point of the comment, we can still think almost, almost, positively… that is to say the important thing is the money because we consider that when consumers arrive while they pay we don’t care about their satisfaction… In the end only the prices will have been, as one of the determining factors… those that will mark their destinations by offers…
And I would add that this way of thinking is already old… Old and as current as it is worrying because it is uncontrolled, because we cannot forget that it is caused by the industrialists themselves “the point is that they come and when they are here we will see”… although prices and services were still decent.
Perhaps now we ask ourselves, (some do not because we have lived the whole process) and why now the problems grow apparently in geometric proportions??? Well let me give a couple of examples:
If we had a single hotel with 100 double rooms and a resort with general services, housing and public services foreseen for the native inhabitants and service personnel,… plus the possible 200 clients it was a normal situation and a real good… And what is happening with its uncontrolled development and 2,300 – 3,400 – 4,500 etc. tourists arrive…. to the same place with the same infrastructures, services and housing but with 20/30 hotels a bigger airport… we already have a serious problem right??… easy right… well the first negative factor that has already been generated in most Spanish cities and tourist destinations or resorts.
Growths… Without the infrastructures, structures and governmental services that have not grown in proportion nor the social housing or general public services… however the speculators rub their hands…, which is not bad of course! that’s why governments have not built housing for 50 years…. they continue projecting and consenting low cost, junk food and speculative accommodations without services… we are going to enter a serious problem…. the lack of credibility in Spanish hospitality…
Let’s move to the second example which is as important as the first…
Let’s think of the 50s to set a beginning…. Without professional tourism schools in Spain and dreaming of a university of Tourism that shamefully still does not exist… thousands of people saw with a vocation of service in this sociocultural movement as tourism is a possibility to “earn a living” and industrialists hired them everywhere in many towns of Spain…. they were not going to have accommodation problems… and without much idea most of them that tourism “is service”… they served with vocation and pride striving to make themselves understood with the “people who came from outside” tourists whose languages they do not understand). But those people wanted to work and as much as possible…(the more money they earned) They had will, the sense of serving, of being useful, being kind, being close, respecting the client, empathizing and getting excited together.
We are in time to recover our excellent reputation in hospitality, earned by the sweat of those of us who love the profession, let us not deny the advantages of modern systems… but let us not forget that working for and in tourism consists basically in that “gentlemen human beings become proud Hosts to attend and serve gentlemen human being clients”.
The rest is another type of secondary business that should be marked with evidence, marked with difference and displaced from the concept of hospitality.
