QUALITY TOURISM… OR TRAVELERS WITH MONEY… SPAIN 2026 By José Aleixandre Caballero. June 2026
I think it is right to clarify what our concept is regarding the meaning of the phrase “quality tourism” – Do we mean a market segment?? Or… millionaire tourists, their human quality, or simply a qualitative desire imagined and interpreted “ad hoc”…
I mean that human “quality” and economic power do not necessarily coexist and that occurs at all levels of travelers and tourists who visit us.
Based on this reflection, the speculations about the phrase “quality tourism” and its meaning are evident and varied.
I believe that in this sector the concept that the capitalist investor in the hotel industry understands from the meaning of the words is “High purchasing power tourism”… that is, the one who does not “bat an eye” when they tell him a price, and does not ask how much it costs before buying…. here I would make a digression… it is curious that we do not want cruise tourists and I suppose neither the ones with mega yachts… Are these quality tourists??
Perhaps we should include in the “quality” segment tourism from families with purchasing power, people who stay in four or five-star hotels… and of course we are not going to despise corporate executives, politicians, religious groups, MICE, etc.
The difficult part is identifying this type of clientele in the macro numbers that arrival statistics give us.
However, such tourism segments do exist, and we try to attract them to all Spanish businesses. Let us consider that parallel to our desire, there is the offer we present to/in the markets and the doubt as to whether it is adequate in location, quality of facilities, our welcome, equipment, services and price for the market segment we intend to attract and in line with the level of demands and requirements of the desired clients.
On the other hand I keep wondering if we really know the dimension and meaning of the business called TOURISM, which I understand brings together all its variants, and what in this our Industry we offer and hope to obtain… what we intend from it and desire… Let us briefly consider and analyze a segment like the holiday one, which due to its evolution and volumes I believe we inherited an industry that gave us and gives us wealth and social economic growth, based on a single segment such as “family sun and beach holidays”… tourism that was made popular and famous by global tour operators for more than 60 years, with slogans like “S.S.” Holidays (sun, sand, sea) which we call beach holiday stays, I understand in line with the location of our Resorts and our hotel offer, their “star” category and tourist apartment offer, with their services, and prices that were adapted according to the demands originating in some important international markets, being considered as tourism of a certain quality due to its nature… And for which we have continued to maintain the offer with a certain balance in quality-price in most of our tourist Resorts….
By the way there is a historical fact, which has nothing to do with nostalgia but which I consider very important because of its raw truthfulness and I think it may be of interest and a reason for analysis… these are the data: a “full board” in a magnificent modern three* hotel was contracted then between 125 and 175 pesetas (between 0.75€ and 1.05€) per person and day depending on the hotel category, type of accommodation and location with respect to the beach… and with this type of holiday tourism and its economy,… Spain earned foreign currency that fed its coffers, tourism business industrialists got rich and the families that worked in our sector prospered, earning and saving money… Now let’s see what has happened over time…. the average room income per day “room only” today in a coastal hotel is between 115 and 170€ per day, that is about 19,160.- pts or 28,339.- pts. and…. I’m not joking we are talking about approximately more than 16,200% increase in the selling price of accommodation calculated on the highest price of the time… while the evolution of purchasing power at the time and over time, parallel to a monthly salary of a chambermaid was around 1,800.-pts, that is about 10.87€ gross per month… today it is for the same concept and category 1,800€ per month gross, that is the differential in purchasing power is around 1,666% approx. The comparison is a clear and obvious exponent that this is where a problem begins…
Then we learned to respect and appreciate tourists who visited us full of illusion and happiness, bringing foreign currency to the country and well-being to all Spaniards…. we knew that luxury tourism existed because of those small congresses, F1 clients, those who play golf, politicians, businessmen etc… because they stayed in luxury hotels among other accommodations, also quality tourism from high purchasing power families who visit us for different reasons, above all cultural and holiday. From those visitors we colloquially learned to separate “TOURISM” from: day-trippers, Sunday trippers, backpackers, campers, binge-drinking travelers, bachelor/bachelorette parties etc. who were called “people who came from outside to go wild”… And we respected and assisted them all equally… That is to say that business later called “Industry” due to its macro economic contribution to the Country… was ultimately a tourism business for Spain, it was considered “a good” and as such loved, respected, desired, promoted, and in a way even protected, by the existing government norms and controls on the different official categories, stars in hotels and keys in apartments, officially marking price limits according to seasons, categories and destinations; which served as a base and guarantee for the large Tour operators and Travel Agencies that allowed them to contract their operational capacities in advance and publish their offers in large magazines dedicated to the promotion and sale of the holiday tourism segment generally of Spanish coasts as well as the rest of the world.
Offers widely disseminated and promoted due to the stability of prices and contracted rates, respected throughout the year by most hoteliers located in Spanish coastal destinations who year after year prospered, developed and increased their offer capacities and transformed as a whole into large and prosperous beach “resorts”… it was Seasonal Tourism, families mostly of “necessary holidays” who made regular stays of between seven or fourteen nights according to the offers presented by Tour operators covering departures throughout their countries of origin, offering stays for about six summer months on our Mediterranean coasts and six winter months in our Canary Islands archipelago… They were years of constant growth and development in which Spaniards who worked in the sector together with direct and secondary tourism businesses felt pride and respect for our work and therefore for the tourist clients who visited us.
The economic situation in tourist Spain changed drastically from 1974 when our government decreed price freedom… with this law the start of speculation in hotel rates that was very important and extremely high… here is the first breaking point of the sector’s socio-economic balance… because it seriously affected both the purchasing power of customers and the wages of sector workers, which remained very controlled in their wage claims… Spanish workers who remained and remain outside the purchasing power required today in the environment of their daily and working life… they do not have access to free and speculative wages according to demand and supply… NO, their income is marked and controlled by official scales legally defined… while hoteliers and businesses in general were allowed and are allowed to continue speculating freely since they were left free of their caps and limitations at the time.
As we have said, price freedom also left the consumers/customers themselves out of economic possibilities, and consequently due to the multiplier cost effect created by markets of origin, the promoters/sellers of their products, unable to absorb such excessive price increases or the frequency of hikes, caused drastic drops in holiday sales…. consequently bankruptcies of global intermediary tour operators…. practically the only marketers of all holiday packages in Spain, marking the beginning of a worldwide decline in all existing marketing and sales structural systems and the end of an era of organized holidays marketed as all-inclusive packages for Spain…
The passage of years has taught us and shown us that cycles of highs and lows also occur in the tourism business. We were about to enter a new cycle that offered hopes and opportunities… it began when the announcement reached us in 1986 that Barcelona had been designated host city of the 1992 Olympic Games and with the news the start of a new cycle and the great opportunity to get new markets for City Hotels whose new-build designs were made with a view to attracting client segments with greater purchasing power… tourism such as MICE, and… we did not waste the opportunity…!!! We were aware of its QUALITY determined by the social level of the client and the business purchasing economic power that sponsored it; we took charge of its importance and of course we were very aware of the demands and needs we had to face to attract it… until we achieved it and built loyalty.
José Aleixandre Caballero. Technical Director Consultant of Tourism Companies and Activities
