Tourism in the first quarter: very good for the government, very bad for the economy

I just got from the National Institute of Statistics data on the first quarter of tourists received in Spain.

Describing how well Spain is doing, what the Spanish minister likes will undoubtedly be the head of the tourism minister: “We are proud of the results achieved. We have received 9,675,243 tourists in the first quarter of 2022, up from 696.7 in 2021.” Represents a percentage increase compared to %. This figure shows an increase in the absolute value of 8,461,050 tourists. Tourism has returned, to stay in Spain and resume such an important source of income for the country Thank you for the policies used by this government to do this.You can read the press release of the ministry.

And without a doubt, everything said by the minister Marot Kings This would be true except in the policies of attracting tourists, as it would be a constant fallacy used by this government. They do nothing, nor are they expected to, now that they have entered brain collapse.

Of course, if I were the opposition, I would respond to that press release this way: “Half-truths are caught too quickly. Being correct, what Minister Marotto has said, he has forgotten to say that with regard to 2019, the year in which Spain managed to break all records and reach over 83.5 million tourists, in the quarter we saw a 32% increase in numbers is lacking. Number of tourists visiting our country. In the first quarter of 2019, 14,225,723 foreign tourists crossed our borders, which means 4,550,300 fewer tourists visited our country as compared to 2019. But this is not the worst, it is that there are 4,042,411 fewer tourists than in 2018. 3,263.93 less than 2017 and 2,057,146 less than 2016. And so we can continue to 2012 to find balance.

We have a problem and the problem is very serious.

Tourism, one of the biggest sources of income in our country, It’s still a long way to reach the figures what did we reach our best moments.

United Kingdom, which was the first country to bring us tourists, is still in free fall. It has fallen 37% in the quarter, five points above the average. This figure is very worrying as every British tourist drops an average of 1,067 Euros. If this decline continues at the end of the year, it could lead to a drop in revenues of €7,110 million.

America, a drop of 46%, is the second country that leaves more money per tourist that crosses our borders, exactly €1,586 per tourist. If this decline continues throughout the year, the shortfall could be $2,400 million less income.

As we saw in the previous article, Russian tourism, for some time and as long as the war in Ukraine continues, we will lose it. The month of March, and for the first time in a long time, means no Russian tourists in Spain. This forecasts a further drop of 14,000 million.

I don’t have fixed income data and so these data are estimates, but the trend with 2019 earnings is that we could lose income of EUR 21,500 million, which equates to no GDP growth of 2%, or 4.5 times the amount the Qatari fund is going to invest in Spain.

Sometimes we allow ourselves to be swayed by spectacular figures like the 4,700 million euros that the Qatar QIA Fund is going to contribute to our country, but at the same time, we put up smoke screens, so as not to know that 21,500 From our main fund: million euros Euros could fall for us: tourism.

Whenever I can, I never tire of explaining that for major ailments, great remedies. When there are problems, there are opportunities, it is time to think about what we can do to prevent this from happening.

Albert Einstein said: “In moments of crisis, imagination is more important than knowledge alone.”

The big problem is that we are ruled by people without imagination, without knowledge, and even worse, by people without the ability to be surrounded by people with imagination and knowledge.