The British source tourist market, which has been tied hand and foot by the restrictions adopted to curb the spread of the coronavirus, will experience an intense reactivation once the epidemiological situation improves. According to the director of the Spanish Tourism Office in London, "recovery will be quicker than people are predicting".
In his speech at the conference organized by Turespaña, the director of the Spanish Tourism Office (OET) in London, Javier Piñanes, said that "within this dark panorama there are positive signs that give hope. People really want to travel and are willing to do so as soon as possible".
Although he acknowledged that it is "very difficult to make forecasts", he said that there are "extremely high probabilities that the tourist flow will go to our country since it remains the preferred option in this issuing market.” He even dared to say that, “as long as the circumstances are minimally favourable, British tourists will rush out to Spain (and the islands), which will make the recovery faster than most predict".
Piñanes revealed that the plans of the large tourist groups with a presence in the UK, such as TUI, Jet2 and easyJet, is to restart operations in mid or late March, so that “maybe there could be a small movement in Easter week". Although he foresees that the most vigorous reactivation of demand will not begin until "April and May", forecasting "a strong increase in reservations for the summer".
Despite this, he believes that it is most likely that we will have to wait until 2023 to reach 2019 tourism figures. In addition, he warned that if Spain and its destinations "do not control the pandemic and make us a high-risk country, it will be very difficult for these movements to occur."
