Salou. Costa Dorada. 24 September 2020.
The negative impact of COVID-19 on the economy is enormous and is especially disastrous in the tourism sector. This has been confirmed by the Federació Empresarial d'Hosteleria i Turisme de la província de Tarragona (FEHT), which has made a very sad balance of the tourist season: 74% drop in overnight stays, international tourism practically non-existent and 4,500 million euros less billing.
The president of the Federation, Berta Cabré, has exhaustively radiographed the situation:
- Overnight stays: in 2019 the province had 16 million, which have remained at just over 4,100,000 in 2020.
- Occupancy: the average occupancy has been around 8% in hotels; 11% in campsites and almost 9% in apartments
- Markets: the Spanish market has been the majority, and even so it has fallen almost 60 percent, while the international market has disappeared. The one that has fallen the least has been the French with a decrease of almost 81 percent.
- Length of stay: if the average stay in 2019 was 3.9 days, in 2020 it was 3.3.
According to Cabré, these figures show how the disastrous 2020 tourist season has been:
- establishments closed at Easter due to confinement;
- start of summer season later; sprouts and confinements in summer in Lleida, Aragon, Euskadi, Navarra and Barcelona, the main national markets of the province, which have come less;
- almost non-existent international tourism; no senior European tourism in autumn;
- no congresses, fairs or sports competitions (like the RallyRACC, for example) and the vast majority of accommodations close earlier than usual.
- But, in addition, 45 percent of the establishments in Salou, Cambrils and La Pineda, which account for 75 percent of the province's hotel beds, have not even opened doors in 2020.
SOS
Faced with this bleak panorama, the Federació Empresarial d'Hosteleria i Turisme de la província de Tarragona (FEHT) joins the demands of the Catalan and Spanish confederations of the sector to demand urgent measures from the government to help tourism companies cope with the situation , and to be able to reach the 2021 tourist season with certain guarantees of survival.
Thus, they demand a shock plan for the recovery of the tourism sector and a reactivation plan that includes specific and urgent health, labor, fiscal and economic measures:
- In the workplace, specific ERTEs are demanded for the sector that allow the entry and exit of workers depending on the tourist situation and that have a total exoneration from Social Security of those who remain within the ERTE, not of the that come out. These new ERTEs must be active, at least, until Easter 2021 to ensure that companies have room to reach that date.
- In terms of health, it is committed to conducting tests and tests tourists who arrive in Spain.
- In tax matters, it is requested that the exoneration of some taxes levied on the activity be articulated, both at the local and regional level, for this year 2020, as is the case of the IBI (Real Estate Tax), municipal taxes, Tax on economic activities, etc., which, due to their characteristics, represent a high cost for companies in a context of practically zero income.
- Finally, in the economic sphere, it is claimed that national and international promotional campaigns begin to be planned to activate them quickly once the pandemic passes.
These claims are based on the fact that tourism represents 25 percent of the province's GDP and more than 28 percent of the contributors to Social Security, so that today it is an important socioeconomic engine for the area.
