How Will European Hotels Compensate For Shutdown?

The tourism industry in Spain that has been growing for the past five years can’t survive without the outside traffic — pre-crisis it accounted for 40 to 50% of tourists. This is why hotels are very interested in a swift recovery of the tourist flow. The country is now anticipating the restart of international tourism.

The Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez has announced the start of the season on July 1. The forecasts around the hotel sector jacking up the prices to recoup the losses caused by the lockdown have not yet been proven to be true. Quite on the contrary, hoteliers show readiness to keep the pre-covid booking terms, and even offer upgrades for the same price.

The highest hotel discounts compared to the regular pricing can be found in Mallorca. Hotels in this welcoming island paradise can offer discounts of up to 30%. Other resorts have 10–20% discounts on early booking.

A similar situation can be seen in other countries. Resorts are not the only ones to suffer. Popular tourist-oriented European capitals are not getting the traffic they used to even after the official green light from the authorities. “In June, Vienna saw a very small number of bookings, with occupancy no higher than 10%,” says ORF.at. That’s why booking prices there are much less than usual.

Analysts forecast the slump in occupancy and demand across the entire industry will continue until the fall season. Starting September, the business travel sector will begin to rebound, provided travel restrictions are at least relaxed. Large cities and tourist regions in Austria hope to bring back staff to pre-covid levels by the second quarter of 2021. Prices are expected to come back to old levels around the same time.