Vacation companies are on their way to recover when tourists return to southern Europe

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The busy skies above the Balearic Islands in Spain offer good economic news to southern Europe – after the catastrophic 2020 season, its tourism companies are on the verge of recovery.

The July 2.4m flight to and from Mallorca, the largest on the island, was more than twice the figure the same month in 2020, although it was more than 40% below 2019 before the epidemic.

In the old town of Ciutadella in the nearby city of Menorca, visitors lined up at the many restaurants every night waiting to eat local delicacies like lobster soup.

The influx of visitors is a great relief to the islands, which met with a 24 percent a decline in GDP last year due to coronavirus restrictions preventing people going on vacation from traveling.

“Things have gone much better than we expected five months ago,” said Maria Frontera, chief executive officer of a hotel in Mallorca, adding that about 90% of its members were open for work in August, more than in May.

The tourist companies in southern Europe feared they would lose the following summer in a row. On the contrary, it has avoided the repetition of the 2020 catastrophe even before the return of the plague.

“2020 was a disaster,” said Pepe Díaz, who manages three Menorca hotels. “But this year we have moved from ordinary May to the special July-August period and by 2022 we expect our hotels to perform better than they did in 2019.”

Its mix is ​​different from previous years. Visitors to the UK have always been more and those from France and Germany, even Spain, traditionally preferred in Britain. The beaches continue beyond the city’s rest area, where the market terminals are located he recovered remarkably well than a budget or a place to go for a family.

Overall, millions who stayed at home last year traveled this summer, as the savings and interest in going abroad were released by the red vaccine and loose bans.

“People want to escape right now or are preparing for the coming summer, and are still struggling to save themselves,” said Alan French, chief executive of Thomas Cook, who was reinstated as an online company in the fall of 2019. “Greece continues to be the destination we want to go to, followed by the Canary Islands and the Balearics and Mallorca in particular.” He added that the 80% reservation was for four-star accommodations and beyond.

Yes, high traffic is advancing. Special pilots to and from Mallorca in July were more than two-thirds of the same month in 2019, with about 83 private jets arriving or departing for the day. Pepe García-Aubert, who runs MB92, the world’s largest superyacht refit group, also said it was now impossible to hire.

Uncoordinated restitution translates into a national economy. Maria Jesús Fernández, a financial analyst at Spanish savings banks, said the favorable weather forecast for the country is expected to increase by 0.2% in global growth this year, which equates to about 6.5%.

Economic sharing should also be felt in Greece, which also said GDP growth of 3.4% for second quarter and he hopes to do well by the third, despite encountering setbacks a forest fire and the plague.

“In May we were saying that if we could reach 40% of our reserves in 2019 we would be lucky. Based on our current experience and reservation in September, we will exceed 50 or 60% if there is no sudden development of the epidemic, “said Yannis Retsos, executive director of the Greek Tourism Federation.

In high-income areas such as Corfu, hotels have been moving at 80-90% and staying the price higher than in 2019, according to the hotel association on the island. Greek rail traffic in August was about 90% of the same rate in the same month in 2019, data from Dismissed showed, although the annual figure is still low two years ago.

But elsewhere, the economic benefits have been far greater. A study by the French National Federation of Tourism Organizations provided a better picture of the region.

“But this hope must be dashed and numbers are still low in 2019,” he concluded. “A very good number of French customers. . . did not completely eliminate the shortage of visitors from many parts of France. ”

There are also ongoing concerns about the epidemic.

The transmission of the Delta divergence, along with the winter and back to school, has raised concerns about the coming winter.

Philip Meeson, chief of pilots at Jet2, also added UK lights to determine if travelers should isolate themselves on return due to temporary uncertainty. Customers were keeping “too close to departure”, making it increasingly difficult for travel companies to recognize quantities, he added. The process is set to take place on October 1.

Meanwhile summer reservations are already in full swing, with shoppers betting to return to a normal vacation. Jet2 and Tui will both be booking next year starting when they were in 2019.

But vacationers have warned that with more reservations being made and more likely to be eradicated, there is a need for more.

“The rules of the game have changed,” said Frontera of the Mallorca hotel. “We need to find the right place – sustainable and unpredictable tourism. Because sooner or later the epidemic does not seem to be over.”

Additional reports of Victor Mallet in Paris and Miles Johnson in Rome