how heat waves risk deterring tourists from spending their holidays in Spain

Climate change is also disrupting tourist habits. Exposure to extreme heatwaves reduces the propensity of international tourists to return to Spain, particularly among Britons and Americans, who are among the top visitors to Catalonia after the French, a study suggests.

This is a study published this week by Caixa Bank Research as part of the tourism sector report for the second half of 2024. A study which aims to assess the repercussions of climate change on tourism in Catalonia and Spain. According to the first conclusions and positive point, the projection of a growth of the Spanish tourism GDP of 5% in 2024, more than double what was forecast for the economy as a whole and exceed 90 million tourist visits international.

Behind this growth, lower than last year (7.6%), but higher than forecasts for the coming year (3.2%), there is the recovery of the purchasing power of Europeans thanks to a slight drop in inflation and the perception of stability and security in Spain in an unstable geopolitical context in the Eastern Mediterranean. Although 2023 was already an exceptional year, with record levels of foreign tourists and tourism spending, 2024 marked the best start in the history of the sector.

The climate change study examines the effects that the heatwaves of the last two summers had on international tourism throughout the country and the conclusion is that international tourists who suffered from them in 2022 had a higher probability of not returning in Spain the following summer.

Concretely, the propensity to return to Spain fell on average by 13.8% when the vacationer experienced a heatwave. In the case of British and American tourists, the return trend has plummeted by 34% and 42% respectively. Much higher figures compared to visitors of other nationalities, such as the French (-7.4%) or the Portuguese (-8.7%).

“The vulnerability of international tourism to heat waves highlights the sector’s great sensitivity to climate change. This underlines the crucial importance for the tourism sector to actively participate in the fight against climate change and to apply preventive adaptation measures to mitigate its negative effects. the report said. To mitigate this impact, the CaixaBank study center proposes investing in infrastructure that guarantees the comfort of tourists in more extreme climatic scenarios, for example, with the modernization of hotels and the creation of shaded and green spaces in areas tourist.

“The third dimension that we are putting in place is seasonal adjustment. The probability of heat waves appearing is obviously not the same in August as in January”, explained the Caixa Bank economist. In this sense, the report also notes that hotel occupancy rate increased more outside of peak season monthsespecially if we take into account the months of October, November and December 2023 compared to the average of 2017, in 2018 and 2019.