A record year in terms of tourists visiting Spain, employment in the sector and prices. Spanish hotels welcomed more than 48 million people in August, to which must be added those who frequented other types of establishments, from campsites to apartments. A situation that has led us to see the good side of this activity, because there are already nearly three million people working in the sector, but also very negative aspects, such as the working conditions of these jobs, the pressure that tourist apartments carry out. on housing and the weariness of citizens who demand more responsible tourism with the environment and neighbors.
There is another effect, that of hotel prices which have continued to rise over the last five years. Since August 2019, the rates hotels charge for each room they sell – which the industry calls ADR – have soared by 34.4% across Spain. This means that at the end of August 2024, this average price per stay is around 147 euros, according to the latest data on the situation of hotel tourism published by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
There are territories where the increase has been much higher, such as the Balearic Islands or the Community of Madrid, which present increases of more than 45% and 41%, respectively. Behind them are Asturias, Navarra, the Canary Islands, the Valencian Community and Catalonia, where average rates have increased by more than 30%, as summarized in the following graph. It also shows how the highest average price was reached in August in the Balearic Islands, almost 194 euros on average, which includes all types of hotels, regardless of their category.
This development means that these prices are not affordable for all budgets. It is enough to remember that the most common salary in Spain is 14,586 euros gross. This is the equivalent of 1,042 euros per month in 14 payments, according to the Salary Structure Survey also published by the INE. In other words, this salary would pay for five nights in a hotel in the Balearic Islands without spending anything else, for nothing else, for an entire month.
Average prices per occupied room increased much faster after the pandemic than the number of travelers or the number of nights in Spanish hotels. As we said in this topic, there are many more travelers visiting or visiting Spanish destinations than in 2019, but they are spending fewer nights. On average, they book less than four days in hotels.
There are also travelers who have decided to travel outside of Spain, simply because it is cheaper. “The price has a lot of impact,” says the executive vice president of the Spanish Confederation of Travel Agencies (CECA), José Manuel Lastra, in statements to elDiario.es. “This year and last year, a lot of people come to the travel agency, see the destinations in Spain and abroad and opt for an international destination because it is cheaper. The price is increasing to a certain extent, due to inflation and strong demand,” he explains. Additionally, if we take into account the evolution of prices just at the start of the pandemic (between February and March 2020), the following graph shows how hotel rates increased over time even more than the number of tourists , nights spent in hotels. and the average stay.
Tourist areas that have become the most expensive
Data through August 2024 also allows us to detail the increase in hotels in major tourist destinations. With one exception, because the data published by the INE on the Costa del Sol, Tenerife or the coast of Biscay, among other areas, only goes back to 2021 and does not allow comparison with what happened before the pandemic, when tourism was also in record numbers and there was already talk of saturation in certain destinations.
Even if they cannot be compared to the pre-Covid stage, they are relevant figures, because in 2021 the sector began to recover, little by little, until the mobility restrictions demanded by the coronavirus are eliminated. According to the INE, there are three tourist areas where each hotel night cost on average more than 200 euros in August: Ibiza-Formentera, Menorca and the coast of Gipuzkoa. As seen below.
Prices which, although exorbitant, can continue to increase. This is what hotel companies like Meliá think. Its president and CEO, Gabriel Escarrer, assured a few days ago that the main Spanish destinations are still “very far” from the prices charged in places “as emblematic” as Santorini or Mykonos, in Greece; or the Amalfi Coast, in Italy, as he highlighted during the inauguration of an establishment in the center of Madrid.
Rises, according to the stars
The data also indicates that price increases affect all types of hotels, across all categories. However, the increases are more pronounced at the two extremes, those with one silver star and those with five gold stars.
Concretely, according to INE data, the average price of five-star hotels in August exceeded 311 euros, while 1-star hotels were close to 65 euros. And those in the upper middle category, three and four stars, cost 156 and 127 euros per night respectively.
This takeoff of hotels suggests a trend. “There is a widespread discourse that what we need is better quality tourism distributed throughout the year. In this document, the idea of quality is linked to purchasing power,” explains Asunción Blanco-Romero, professor of geography and member of the Tourism and Socioterritorial Dynamics Research Group (Tudistar).
“The price of hotels increases as part of a selection process, because there is an assumption that since they can pay more, they are more sustainable and more respectful; which criminalizes others as if they were not criminals,” argues the geographer. “Quality tourism is not exclusively that which has the highest income, which may be poorly understood. For example, golf tourism is a predator of resources, territory and water,” he says. “The consequences are that if you can’t stay in a hotel, you will go to other cheaper accommodation, whether legal or illegal, and that’s where we find the problem with apartments and tourist residences. ” Thus, he summarizes, “the resident suffers the consequences and, with this increase in prices, the impossibility of doing internal tourism, which is the most social, will increase.”
As solutions, Blanco-Romero suggests changing the discourse and not talking about tourism as a single uniform reality throughout the territory. “We cannot speak of a single model. “You have to think, think about the needs of each place, as if it were microsurgery.” Not only looking for solutions to the rise of holiday apartments, but also modifying “labor legislation so that professionals in the sector are more satisfied and offer alternatives linked to social tourism”, as is the case with Imserso trips , to make vacations easier. in Spain, regardless of income level.
