Hi Emma
It looks like you disagree with my post about Toursim.
All I can say is that -
a) I research the issue a few months ago.
b) I have been selling self-catering holidays in Spain for over 20 years and my commonsense tells me that the stats are very wrong.
c) I have UK (self-catering) tour operator clients in UK who send their clients to lots of different destinations and who say that Spain has been going down BIG TIME since 2002 (except for the Balearic and Canary Islands).
I need to explain where all these misleading facts are coming from but you can see everything in detail here -
ARTICLE: The Spanish Tourism Crisis written in July 2007. I took all my facts from the
WTO Estimates for 2007
Now obviously there is no disputing that receipts from Tourism have increased, that had to happen because Spain is much, much more expensive than it was 10 years ago.
The misunderstanding is cuased by the fact that we are looking at
tourist entries and the only way it can be judged is by the
total number of days for bona fide tourists and there has been a
dramitic and critical decrease in this respect during the period 1997 - 2007.
You say that the number of tourists for for 2007 was 59.2 millon and I actually estimated 59 million but the problem is that the current trend is for shorter, more frequent holidays.
In 1997 47.000 million visitors stayed an average of 12 days (estimated) = 564 million tourist days.
In 2007 59.000 million visitors stayed an average of 8 days (estimated) = 472 million tourist days.
If the average stay is correct you can already see that there has been a
significant reduction.
When we talk about tourists can we consider that property owners are bono fide tourists when they stay at their property?
If you consider this is not the case then you have to consider that in 1997 400,000 properties were owned by foreign residents and by 2007 this had increase to 1,200,000 (Estimated).
If you further imagine that each owner occupied his/her property with 4 persons for 28 days you have to deduct 44.8 and 134.4 millon respectively leaving the
bono fide tourist as 237.2 and 148.8 million respectively - which is bad enough but it gets worse!
I know that, until now, we were just considering tourism figures but there is another issue that concerns the whole real estate sector.
If we say that the ratio between hotel and self-catering beds has remained the same and crunching the figures a little more to calculate the average rental demand in weeks per self-catering property we get 21 weeks in 1997 and 4.4 weeks in 2007 - and that's hell of a problem for the Buy2Let brigade!
Now I have worked hard at rentals for 20 years and had my finger on the pulse all through. My gut feeling tells me that my calculatione were about right because in the 1980's I had around 100 villas on contract and gave rental gurantees - anything up to 30 weeks and mostly filled them up.
I now have around 30, give no guarantees whatsover and only take on the best ones. I will average 12 to 14 weeks in each.
My holiday clients pay about the same as they did in 1987 (in £sterling). Flights cost about the same but the properties are much better quality (air cond., heated pools etc.). The villa owners earn considerably more but my margins are a joke.
I do last moment deals, marking up just £50 in order to fill the villas and get the owner some rent.
When I started rentals were based on 14 nights accommodation, Saturday to Saturady, and there was a surcharge for a 1 wwek holiday. Most clients stayed for 14 nights, some for 21.
Now changeover days are Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, 5 days minimum (pro rata) with a discout for more than 13 nights. The average is now 8 nights because I do a lot of business with Spanish clients who come for "puentes", 3 or 4 nights but I charge them for 5.
There was a news item the other day (Costa Blanca News, I think). It was said that a number of hotel owners had successfully petitioned the town hall to allow change of usage from hotels to commercial and residential.
Guess where?
Benidorm - the tourist flagship of the Costa Blanca!
Sorry Emma - I am not convinced that Spanish Tourism is flourishing!
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