BarcelonaFor years, the arrival of tourists has not stopped growing. A constant flood of visitors that has an economic translation. Tourism has become a strategic sector: it represents around 11% of Catalan GDP, contributed mainly by the more than 20 million foreign tourists who registered last year, a figure that has more than doubled in just 25 years. This is an unprecedented growth that has also had consequences for the residents, with the massification of city centers and the loss of local identity, as well as the disappearance of thousands of flats from the housing market for conversion into tourist apartments, which are much more profitable than a conventional rental.
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With this background scenario, the Economic Circle, through the Productivity and Innovation Initiative (IPI), has opened the debate on which type of tourism is suitable for Catalonia, after having noted that the massif “shows symptoms of exhaustion that require a review”. “The model of extensive expansion, based on the accumulation of record arrivals, generates negative externalities that strain coexistence,” the organization claims in a report where it calls for a review of the Catalan model to guarantee its future.
Less family income and lower productivity
A consensus towards generating more added value shared by all the experts and business representatives consulted by the entity, supported by multiple data from this massive phenomenon that is felt, especially, in Barcelona and the Catalan coastal towns. The capital has benefited from the boom in urban tourism thanks to the proliferation of low-cost airlines and tourist apartment rental platforms such as Airbnb. All this has meant that, between the years 2000 and 2024, overnight stays in hotels have gone from 7.8 million to 20.2 million and, in terms of tourist apartments, more than 12 million overnight stays have been reached. A popularity that generates very high revenues per hotel room (RevPAR), unlike those of coastal towns such as Salou and Lloret de Mar, which have fewer luxury hotels than Barcelona. In fact, profitability is lower than in other coastal destinations such as the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, as the report states.
The revenue per hotel room
2024 data in RevPAR index
The specialization of some municipalities in sun and beach tourism is also reflected in a lower family disposable income. In cases such as that of Lloret, it represents 59% of the Catalan average, and in Roses it is 66%. Despite these differences between the capital and the rest of Catalonia, the sector not only generates rejection among neighbors, but also entails low salaries – 32% lower than average – and a lower overall productivity than other autonomous communities such as the Basque Country, despite having similar levels of industrial productivity. This indicates that there are sectors such as tourism that harm the performance of the entire economy and become less competitive than other tourist regions such as the Balearic Islands.
Gross family income available per territory
Comparison in percentage of the Catalan average with the municipalities with a high specialization in sun and beach tourism
How to improve productivity?
For the Economic Circle, the key to everything is to see how the productivity of the sector can be increased. “We have an impressive asset, but we have to see how we get the most out of it and we have to do it by talking to all the actors”, summarizes the director general of the Cercle d’Economia, Miquel Nadal. In this sense, the economist Miquel Puig, who introduces the subject in the report drawn up by the IPI, directed by Xavier Vives, points out that the low production level that has historically characterized tourism companies “is not an intrinsic fatality, but the result of a specific business model based on competition via prices and wage restraint”. For this reason, he gives the example of the Austrian Tyrol, a tourist region that has one of the highest productivity and GDP per capita in Europe, nothing to do with the Catalan results.
There are those who advocate reducing the offer and those who advocate, on the other hand, to increase taxes on tourist activities
Puig justifies this situation with policies such as “immigration is contained through collective agreements that establish high minimum wages and professional qualification requirements”, and indicates that an employee of a hotel in the Swiss canton of Grisons earns 64,000 euros annually. Salaries that are not seen here, where in addition, despite being a leading tourist power, there is no prestigious training school, as there is in Switzerland. The economist argues that the labor reform that Mariano Rajoy approved in 2012 caused wage reductions in groups such as housekeepers. “The result was an increase in competitiveness, the number of tourists and migrant employment, but also a reduction in productivity,” he criticizes. For him, the solution requires increasing wages, increasing the tourist tax and reducing the supply of accommodation, measures that tend to be rejected by the business sector.
In this sense, other experts consulted by the Economic Circle such as Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) professor Giacomo AM Ponzetto see measures such as hotel moratoriums as a “protectionist temptation” that will generate monopolistic income for existing operators. “Imposing a reduction in the tourist offer would imply obvious inefficiencies”, remarks Ponzetto, who adds that “the rise in prices would also cause a loss for Catalan consumers, who represent the majority of customers in Barcelona’s restaurants”. Instead of quotas, Ponzetto bets on the tourist tax to internalize externalities without harming competition.
