The Tourism Industry In Spain

The touristry Industry In SpainSpain developed its tourism during the last yrs of dictators Franco governance, when the country became a frequent place for summer holidays, especially for tourists from northerly Europe (UK, France, Germany and Scandinavia). It is said that mass tourism started that time because Francos government needed money and dedided to open up its coasts for tourism. . At that time, Mallorca, rib del Sol and all multi-storey buildings on the coast were built. Murcia and Almeria were not built because on that point did not nourish a good ne cardinalrk. This was what protected them. However, in the minds of the locals this was the cause of their poverty (Barke et al. 1996120).Since then, Spain has become the second the nearly visited country in the world (the first one is France). 60 million foreign tourists arrived in Spain in 2007, according to the data provided by the World tourism Organization (2007), that its offices are in Madrid. The represent of tourism in Spain is over $ 46 one thousand thousand per year, the highest tourism cost worldwide except for U.S. that has tourism expenditure of $ 74 billion (Sinclair et al. 200875).Summer spas and beachesThis form of tourism was the first that was developed in Spain, and today is the one that has received more income grants and subsidies form the state economy. The courteous and warm climate during the whole year and the long beaches on the Mediterranean and South Atlantic, as well as Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands have been visited by tourists from northern Europe for decades. These summer resorts are touristed among Spaniards as well.The Spanish coasts that suitable for summer holidays include Costa Dorada, Costa Brava and del Maresme, located in Catalonia, which are in truth popular for local and French tourists, including the popular resorts like Salou and the city of Barcelona which is also the superst port in Spain. Costa del Azahar, whose main city is Valenc ia and Costa Blanca, (one of the most developed Spanish coastal regions, extremely popular for tourists from Great Britain and Germany, having Benidorm as the main summer city of Spain. Costa Calida. The side de Almera, the tropical side, Costa del Sol and Costa de la Luz, all of them are found in Andaluca. Some of its summer resorts are famous all over the world, like Marbella, a tourist resort for tourists with important spending capacity. Finally, one of the largest Spanish ports, is Malaga (Fsadni and Selwyn 199766).The volcanic Canary Islands in the Atlantic, and the Balearic Islands are two famous Spanish archipelagones. Many Spaniards and foreigners visit them because they are in truth popular.Apart from the summer tourism, there are other forms of tourism such as cultural, sport or fun tourism. Two cities, Barcelona and Valencia (the two largest ports in the Mediterranean side of Spain) are among them.Tourism of the beaches (Beach Tourism) has also contributed to the ontoge ny of nightlife, as well as to the Spanish excellent food culture.Important from the ecological and natural nerve are many places both coastal and island Theme and water-fun parks like Port Aventura are also popular among the local population and foreigners (Eden 199648).Long ago it became known in Europe Senior Tourism plan that allows people over 55 to enjoy a holiday social tourism in Spain with low cost. The program subsidizes the EU holiday in the Balearic Islands and Andalusia in periods of low tourist traffic from October 2009 until April 2010.The common mood costs where the agency is about 400 euros for 8 days 4stars at selected hotels with full board, tickets, tours, and more.Tourist Packages in Spain are part of the program Calypso approved by Parliament with a budget of 1 million euros and refers to the promotion of social tourism with the participation of Member States.Cultural and business tourismSpain is a country full of culture and therefore, it is a popular destin ation for cultural tourism due to its historical importance, including cities like Seville, Granada, Crdoba and Toledo. UNESCO has declared the spare-time activity Spanish cities as World Heritage Cities Alcal de Henares, vila, Cceres, Crdoba, Cuenca, Ibiza, Salamanca, La Laguna SAN Cristbal de, Santiago de Compostela, Segovia, Tarragona and Toledo (Maiztegui-Onate 199684).Madrid and Barcelona (two big Spanish metropolis) are famous historical places and are also part of cultural tourism. In addition, there are other important places in Spain with cultural importance are Corua and Vigo, in Galicia, Santander Cantabria, Oviedo and Gijn Asturias, Bilbao and San Sebastin in the Basque country. North Spain has such a green landscape that resembles to the UKs and Ireland landscape and this is why it is Green Spain. They have many important folklore, nature and culinary aspects and they are even suitable for summer vacations disrespect the fact that the beaches of North Spain are colder than the Mediterranean ones.Spain is also an important place for religion, mainly Judaism and Christianity.The city of Santiago de Compostela Galicia (northwest Spain) are holly places. This city is the third holiest place in the christian world after the Vatican City of Rome and Jerusalem. The fourth holiest place is Camino de Santiago hunted by the sanctuary Caravaca de la Cruz in the southeast area. These places attract tourism from all over the world (Robinson 1996210).The many celebrations and festivals in Spain. A very famous one is the Holy Week in cities like Seville and Carthage. Very popular also is the Seville Exhibition or Feria de Abril in Spanish, the celebrations of Spring (Fiestas de Primavera) which include the famous Entierro de la Sardina (Burial of the sardine) and La Huerta EL Bando de (the area of the orchard) This festival attracts crowds from both intimate and outside Spain. There are also the festivals Carthaginians and Romans of Carthage, the festival of San Fermin of Pamplona famous worldwide, the Fiestas del Pilar in Zaragoza etc. The celebrations in small towns are also very popular.Spain has a lot of cultural festivals, including the Carnival all over Spain, but particularly the festivals of the Canary Islands and Cadiz. San Sebastian, Malaga and Sitges have famous film festivals. The Lorca Rock, FIB, Festimad, and Primavera sound are some indicative music festivals. Several cities have hosted international eventsCatholic expounding in 1888 and 1929 in Barcelona, the Olympics of 1992, also in Barcelona, the catholic exhibition of 1992 in Seville, the 2008 world exhibition in Zaragoza and the Americas Cup in Valencia (Selwyn 199793).The Europe Senior Tourism program is another tourist attraction source of Spain. This program allows people over 55 to enjoy low cost holidays of social tourism in Spain. It is an EU program that subsidizes vacations in the Balearic Islands and Andalusia in periods of low tourist traffic namely, fr om October 2009 until April 2010.The indicative cost depending on the tourist agency is about 400 euros for 8 days at selected 4stars hotels with full board, tickets, tours etc.Tourist Packages in Spain are part of the program Calypso which was approved by the European Parliament with a budget of 1 million euros and refers to the promotion of social tourism with the participation of Member States.Tourism in Spain and financial dataThe sightseeing visits and payments in 2008 (Sinclair et al. 200885)are the followingGreeceSpainItalyFranceTurkeyVisitors (in millions)1757,442.779.325Revenue ($ billions)17.161.641.755.622.From the above numbers, it is easily concluded that Spain is a major tourist destination, but it also attracts high-level tourists who spend enough money, since it has the best revenue ratio per visitor among the major European destinationsThe tourist development of the country is organized. Some areas are developed for very high level tourism as Marbella.Some areas are selected for mass tourism, as for example Benidorm which is a Spanish Miami with 4 million visitors every year or not Liouret de Mar and Rosas in Costa Brava.In addition, tourism is organized in large hotels, which have lower costs and higher bargaining power with the major tour operators. One example is the Sol Melia which has a revenue of 1.3 billion euros, 35,000 employees at 270 hotels from Brazil to China. Another example is Iberostar with 102 hotels in 15 countries and 1 billion revenue, 23,000 employees and around 70,000 beds.However, if financial data get more analyzed the following will be concludedSpain in 2008 (Sinclair et al. 200894) welcomed 57.4 million visitors, representing 1.8 million fewer than last year, which means a fall of 3.1%. This fact has occurred since 1997, the year when, the statistical monitor of the tourist industry began. This decline is mainly due to the decrease in arrivals from France and the United Kingdom which are two of the three main countrie s of foreign tourists in Spain. The ratio of reduced tourist traffic is attributed to a decline in the economies of these two countries.So, after the sectors of construction and industry, there was the turn of the tourism sector to oversee with crisis. This sector represents 10.7% of Spanish GDP and employs 13.5% of the workforce of the country.The areas with the highest tourist traffic in 2008 were Catalonia with 14,193,952 tourists (-6.7%), the Balearic Islands with 10,288,958 tourists (+1.4%), the Canary Islands with 9,363,219 tourists , (-1%), Andalusia with 8,147,688 tourists (-4%), the region of Valencia with 5,655,801 tourists (+0.2%) and Madrid with 4,564,345 tourists (+3.6% ).The tourists in the country in 2008 and the percentage modification compared to 2007 is as followsTable 1Countries of originNumber of tourists% change compared to 2007United Kingdom15.749.000-3.0Germany10.048.939-0.2France8.151.449-8.5Scandinavian countries3.574.398+3.0Italy3.464.241-5.8Netherlands2. 502.060+0.4Portugal2.291.146-3.5Ireland1.659.327+1.5Belgium1.626.983-4.7Switzerland1.282.740-6.7 proportion of Europe3.262.834+11.6USA1.133.801-1.5Rest of America1.331.449-6.1Rest of the world1.339.499-12.2TOTAL57.417.871-2.6Source Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and vocationTable 2YearNumber of tourists (in millions)% change compared to 2007199739.5199841.85.9199945.48.5200046.42.1200148.54.7200250.33.6200350.81.0200452.43.1200555.96.6200658.14.1200759.11.7200857.4-3.1Source Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and CommerceCriticism of the Spanish model of tourismThe Spanish model has disappointed its original supporters. The promising North European market turns its back to Spain. The temporary scotch gains in the housing market and in the construction market of vacation houses have already begun to subside. Unlike the most optimistic forecasts of the real estate lobby, these investments in 2005 showed a decrease of 16.7%. The decrease of 6% in 2004 was interpreted as a s light variation, and not as a big change (Casado Diaz 200678). immaterial investments in the real estate sector dropped by 0.9%. The property market in Spain has began to have a negative reputation among potential customers of northern Europe, tour international organizations talk about the need to manage a soft landing of the specific market to avoid unpleasant and extended economic consequences.The rearing construction of holiday homes and hotels in coastal areas has begun to generate negative consequences. The freely accessible places on the beaches have been reduced overcrowding and disturbing activities are increasing, the water tonus is deteriorating having as an effect the undermining of the overall tourism policy in Spain. The professional organizations of hoteliers call for an immediate discontinuation of coastal areas building programs.Lastly, there is the growing drive for creating golf courses at the new holiday home complexes and the subsequent environmental conse quences (Wall 1997105). Indeed, it is planned an increase in golf areas scorn the saturation of these facilities. It is estimated that each year 10 new stadiums are built and in ten years, there will be 500 golf areas (Mc Laren 2002187). The strengthening of trend of creating new golf areas is based on the fact that golfers spend on average much more money per person.The reaction to this new situation was an attempt to redefine tourism policy (Newton 1996 150). The fall in profits encouraged the adoption of positions that until recently was criticized inthe tourism industry.The Mediterranean coasts of Spain gather 15,600,000 residents who represent 39% of the total population. The length of its coastline is 7268. and 68% of the population lives in an area of 100 km from the coast, where the corresponding figure for the entire world population is 39%. Urbanization is so widespread that 85% of the population the Mediterranean coast lives in cities with populations over 10,000 inhabit ants (Kirkby 1996240).In general, in recent years, there has been recorded a significant deterioration of thecoastal areas of Spain despite the existence of relative specific legislation.The situation in some coastal areas is as follows (Casado Diaz 200177)In the region of Catalonia, nearly 50% of one kilometre highroad from the coast is built. 59% of the coastline has already been built. It is estimated that 70% of the coast will be built within the next years.Specific parts of the coasts of Mlaga have been built 100% and this trend is spreading to the shores of Granada, Almeria, Kadid and Huelva. 90% of the Andalusian coast faces already problems of environmental degradation. Even natural area parks, such as the Cabo de Gata-Nijar in Almeria, have become an area of housing development programs and projects.The rapid urbanization and population growth of the region of Murcia has led to an increase of population growth in two years (1999 2000) by 15% bringing a significant pressu re for further residential development and reduction of free and public spaces.Many coastal regions of Valencia have been built. 33% of the total coastal area shows residential development. Specific areas such as Alicante have been built at a rate stupendous 40% of its coasts. The urban development plans of the region have occasionally been the subject of study and complaints from the European Commission (Bramwell 1996453). Indeed, the latter has proposed the imposition of a moratorium on the urban development to address the related deficiencies in design and ensure the protection of the environmental conditions of the development process (Casado Diaz et al. 2004363).ConclusionSpain remains a country of owing(p) beauty and high tourist interest. The model, however, of mass tourism that has followed does not seem to be as successful as it was in the past and the country should follow modern tourism practices that will help it remain competitive in the future. A basic prerequisite for a successful redefined tourism strategy should be the concern for the environment and the reduction of residential development (Hunter Jones et al.1997291).