Third Article on the Evolution of Tourism in Spain Taking as a base the period 1965/80

José Aleixandre Caballero
Technical Director of tourism Companies and activities :

In this article I will continue to comment on the evolution of tourism and the growth of hotel development on an industrial scale, which began during the period between 1965 and 1980.

In my previous article, I explained how the first travelers arriving on our coasts encouraged the creation of small, family-run businesses in seaside towns—a sociocultural phenomenon that was enriching and evolutionary, and which took deep root in our country, especially in coastal communities. This was driven by the attraction of the primitive singularity of those destinations and their appealing accommodation offerings, whose services and prices were affordable for the majority of European family economies.

Soon, this popularity aroused growing interest, to the point that a tourism boom began in the 1960s, supported by the sharp increase in demand in the countries of origin. This effect led to the constant growth of new accommodations, which were eagerly used at origin to create travel offers with stays, converted into “holiday packages” and marketed through vast numbers of travel agencies throughout Europe. These agencies commercialized extensive programs created by travel wholesalers or tour operators. These “giants” of the tourism business initiated a cycle of highly industrialized operations, so much so that many of them created their own airlines, coach fleets, cruise lines, as well as their own receptive administrative structures. They went on to make very significant economic investments to support the construction of new, modern, and attractive accommodations in order to secure fully occupied hotels for exclusive use. Later on, they even created their own hotel chains, travel agencies, etc., thus closing the business circle: customer acquisition at origin, transport, local services, and accommodation.

These were years of evolution and many changes. Tourism ceased to be a “delicacy” and became a large industrial cake, driven by the extraordinary quantity of modern and highly attractive holiday hotel supply, mostly aimed at an international consumer market that was already convinced that vacations were a vital necessity rather than a luxury. The main growth factors were the appeal of “package” offers and the ease of purchasing them. Demand was offered “the product” that satisfied it at very affordable prices.

In my view, this marked a turning point. I believe that, by losing an essential part of being treated individually “with human warmth” at a personal level due to mass tourism, the tourist gained in return “impersonal” travel and stay offers, organized in new and modern hotel facilities with a wide accommodation supply, complemented by leisure and service offerings. These were “different” in terms of service quality, accommodation, and leisure spaces, where economic performance and volume of occupancy prevailed to the detriment of quality and service standards. Impersonal treatment began, along with a poor and deficient gastronomic offering. Economic complaints arose, and the human quality of service and food was lost.
Massive and varied offers from many Spanish coastal destinations reached European markets with such strength of penetration—due to their content and price—that, as a whole, these “holiday stay packages” were presented as unbeatable and affordable to almost all family economies.

The great advantage of those markets was that, involuntarily, the “capacity of accommodation supply and destination promotion” was controlled by the relationship between supply capacity and demand capacity, limited by the transport means themselves.

A point arrived where the success of offers and sales converged, producing extraordinary mass growth whose effects spread across the entire Iberian Peninsula. The progressive increase in accommodation supply was such that the symptoms of success pushed into the background the serious problems caused by overcrowding and seasonality, such as overbookings, transport issues, mobility, hygiene, public services, security, etc., etc.
These problems were further structurally aggravated by internal migration driven by service personnel, creating major demands for housing, medical services, transport, consumption, etc., of enormous importance. However, just like the lack of adequate infrastructure and general services, these issues were ignored by administrations and central governments.

Pressing problems then emerged in filling the jobs generated by tourist occupancy with professionally trained personnel, who were practically nonexistent. As a result, quality across all sectors declined and coexisted as an endemic consequence born from mass tourism, further aggravated by the proliferation of businesses operating under the tourism effect.
Beaches and streets filled with life following the arrival of “tour operation” tourism. Many thousands—indeed, I would say hundreds of thousands—of clients arrived and departed each week through Spain’s various airports.

On September 15, 1978, price liberalization was decreed in Spain, with immediate effects on hotel and tourist apartment rates. From January 1979 onward, the accommodation supply was severely affected by excessive and uncontrolled price increases, impacting the final product to such an extent that, in most cases, it became practically beyond the economic reach of the regular consumer client. The quality–price ratio suffered excessively, and as a consequence, some tour operators went bankrupt due to the loss of competitiveness in origin markets. Some hotels and accommodation buildings closed due to lack of commercialization, having fallen out of the offer, and were forced to reinvent themselves by converting their use. Many buildings under construction intended for hotel use halted works and abandoned projects due to the lack of future prospects.

Thus began the adventure of speculation, which little by little changed most commercialization strategies in search of new markets and intermediary marketers, causing great disorientation among consumers, who lost references to hotels in tour operator catalogues. This led to further bankruptcies among tour operators due to market declines caused by unaffordable pricing offers.

Meanwhile, tourism in inland cities began to experience improvements, creating new venues that favored the attraction of new markets and, with them, some new hotel developments. This was due to the growth in the creation of fair and exhibition spaces, and because some airports began to gradually increase their volumes—such as Madrid or Barcelona—while others entered into decline, such as Las Palmas, Girona, Alicante, Reus, Castellón, La Seu d’Urgell, Lleida, etc.

José Aleixandre Caballero
Technical Director of tourism Companies and activities

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