A Benidorm resident has cautioned that Spain’s tourism sector may be on the verge of “collapse”.
Ana, who runs the popular YouTube channel ‘Benidorm by Ana’, revealed in a recent video that hotels in Benidorm were 90% full in September, despite it officially being the off-season. “The places are still really busy, the bars, restaurants, cafeterias,” she noted.
Ana also highlighted recent Spanish news headlines warning of a potential tourism “collapse”. And she pointed to a particular phrase in one article, “die of success”, as a potential warning sign of what might be to come.
Ana said: “This is a typical Spanish phrase, ‘die of success’, that [something’s] so, so, so successful that it’s not even good any longer. This might be the case. Only in August, around 11million people arrived in Spain, and up until now, up until October month, there has been around 64million tourists here in our country.”
She suggested that Spain “prioritises quantity over quality in some places” when it comes to tourism. Ana went on: “Spain was always tracking the number of how many tourists arrive, and a lot of places had very cheap holidays, like drinking stag/hen party holidays, people were coming in crowds but as a result it’s not as good as it seemed at first.
“Because spending is not as high and having so many people makes extra work and effort for cleaning services, for staff of the tourism industry in general. So it’s not as good as it seemed.”
Ana also shared her insights on the anti-tourism protests that erupted in various Spanish cities and holiday destinations this year, with locals furious at increased rent prices driven by properties being bought for the tourism industry.
She suggested the protests have started to “slow down”, a shift she finds understandable considering the onset of Spain’s “quieter season”. Ana added: “All I’m going to say is that these protests did not affect tourism at all, because we’re hitting record numbers!”