The second week of the electoral campaign runs with prices never seen before in hotels in Barcelona. While the candidates continue to debate the impact of tourism on the city, conferences and concerts fill hotel rooms and apartments. The sector anticipates a record summer, and not so much for the number of tourists but for the high prices they will pay to spend the night in the city. Yesterday, under the influence of Elton John and Coldplay, it was impossible to find a room in a three-star hotel for less than 250 euros.
Although there has not been an opportunity to debate in depth what the tourism model of the future should be, the question does generate obvious discrepancies and serves as a lance weapon during the campaign. Between the free bar proposed by the PP, Ciutadans or Valents and the regulation defended by BComú (demands to close two of the seven cruise terminals agreed in 2018 and announces a new crusade against tourist flats) are ERC, the PSC and Junts , more inclined to better regulate the flow of tourists and thus alleviate the negative effects of their concentration in time and place.
No one disputes the importance of tourism in the city’s economy – it represents between 12% and 15% of GDP. Another thing is the formulas to manage the activity. The socialists, who for the last four years have occupied the tourism council, advocate for a diversification of points of interest and defend the search for “quality tourism”, which with a smaller number of visitors generates the same impact economical or more. In this sense, Barcelona’s tourist promotion has been focused since the pandemic lockdown – which reduced activity to zero and which provided the unprecedented postcard of a city with closed and barred hotels – based on thematic campaigns , which boost gastronomy, culture, or highlight the tourist offer in the city’s surroundings as a centrifugal effect.
If the mayor boasts of her regulatory initiative, materialized in the Special Urban Plan for Tourist Accommodations (Peuat) – a model that other countries are now studying -, the training of former mayor Xavier Trias does not rule out that in monumental buildings in the center , surgically and strategically, new hotels can be opened there.
ERC, for its part, maintains that the city’s economy cannot depend on tourism and demands that the collection of the tourist tax – they estimate that around 400 million during the next mandate – be invested in the areas of the city that suffer more tourist pressure, i.e. Ciutat Vella, l’Eixample, Sagrada FamÃlia or around the Carmel bunkers, which have been closed at night for a few weeks to relieve overcrowding in the area.
Drastic regulatory measures for some and insufficient for others, such as the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Barcelona, ​​which denounces the collateral effects of mass tourism and gentrification and which criticizes that the parties have not recently raised the need of a change in the tourist model.
Beyond the debate, the numbers speak. Between January and April, hotels recorded an occupancy rate of 77%, just three tenths of the 2019 figures and with a significant difference: for the first time the average room price has been above 150 euros . Some prices that have climbed again this week. The expectations for the summer could not be more optimistic in terms of employment. The industry is making up for historically weaker visitor months with convention and event clients.
Precisely, yesterday, the International Association of Congresses and Conventions (ICCA) ratified Barcelona’s leadership and once again places the city as the first in the number of congress participants – a position it has held since 2013 – and fourth in the number of congresses, only behind Vienna, Lisbon and Paris and ahead of others such as Prague, Madrid, Berlin, Athens or Brussels.
According to this ranking, Barcelona is also the first non-capital city of the State and the first in all of Spain to have organized the most conferences during 2022, thus accumulating more than 20 years in a row in the top 5 of international conferences.
This success in participation, despite having fewer congresses than other cities, confirms the latest profile survey by Turisme de Barcelona, ​​in which more than 60% of congress participants assured that the city chosen as its headquarters has a decisive influence on the decision whether or not to attend a congress.
The list, in which Barcelona has been in the first five positions for 23 years, only counts rotating international congresses between three countries and with a minimum of 50 delegates. Thus, such important congresses as Mobile or ISE are left out, which if they were counted would further strengthen the city’s leadership in this sector. For this year, 40 congresses with more than a thousand delegates have already been confirmed, such as that of the International Union of Public Transport (from 4 to 7 June) or the World Parkinson Congress (from 4 to 6 July).
