The vice president of the Patronat de Turisme de Lleida, Juan Antonio Serrano, yesterday asked the hotel and rural tourism federations to put pressure on their city council and Parliament so that municipalities have more capacity to limit housing for tourist use. According to his data, they represent an offer of 4,240 establishments and 23,320 beds in Lleida, figures that are above the rest of tourist accommodation in the territory such as hotels, campsites.
“It’s scary, if we don’t take it seriously it’s very likely that rural tourism will end up disappearing, because all the facilities are provided for tourist-use housing and nothing is provided for regulated housing,” said Serrano, also mayor of Vielha, at the presentation of the study on the evolution of rural tourism in Lleida over the last 20 years, prepared by the Càtedra de Turisme d’Interior i de Muntanya of the University of Lleida.
The document points to an increase in the supply of rural tourism houses in the province by 124% in number of establishments, standing at 5,057 and 117% in the number of beds, up to 5,057.
For her part, the president of the Federation of Rural Tourism Houses, Núria Ferrando, has agreed with Juan Antonio Serrano’s proposal in the sense that it would be necessary to control more and stop the growth that houses for tourist use are having, among other aspects because they enjoy more advantageous taxation, although she has affirmed that work is being done on them.
Jaume Macià, the author of the study, highlighted the dynamism of rural tourism in the region of Lleida, which experienced the “rural tourism boom” between 2002 and 2009, when the number of establishments and places practically doubled.
Starting in 2009, the rapid growth of the supply came to a halt and a new stage began with much more moderate growth and with signs of a certain stagnation. A situation that Macià has attributed to the serious economic crisis that had a direct impact on the tourism sector and to another “possible cause, much more recent, the boom in tourist-use housing that has experienced strong growth in recent years.
The report highlights the concentration of rural tourism establishments in the regions of the Lleida Pyrenees, which have 74% of the demarcation’s offer in terms of the number of establishments and 70.3% of the number of places and highlights the pull that has been taking place in La Plana in recent years linked to activities such as fruit tourism or olitourism.
Solsonès, Pallars Sobirà and Alt Urgell lead the offer in Catalonia, according to the study in which it is striking that Val d’Aran, despite having been the pioneer region in the offer of rural tourism, has practically not experienced any type of growth in the last 20 years. In 2002 Aran had 18 establishments, and 20 years later it has only grown by one, with which it currently has an offer of 19 establishments, a figure that does not correspond to the growth trend of the rest of the regions of the demarcation. It is highly probable, according to Macià, that the fact that Aran already had a wide range of hotels and second homes, closely linked to snow tourism, and above all “the boom in housing for tourist use, have slowed down expectations for the development of rural tourism.”
Serrano insisted that his city council was the first to regulate and limit “very strongly” five years ago housing for tourist use and that, since then, “only five housing establishments for tourist use have been opened in Vielha and Mijaran.
The growth of the rural tourism offer in Barcelona, ??and especially in Girona, has been more accentuated during the last 20 years than that of Lleida. Until 2006-2007, the province of Lleida led the rural tourism sector in Catalonia in terms of total volume of offer, both in number of establishments and beds, from then on Girona passed ahead. Also in recent years, Barcelona has surpassed Lleida in number of places. “Rural tourism in the Lleida regions -says the author of the report- has lost weight in percentage terms within the whole of Catalonia due to much more contained growth than in other territories”.
