Vaccine brings Easter promise for tourism recovery

Vaccine brings Easter promise for tourism recovery

TOURISM FORUM: Benidorm mayor speaks at the inauguration of the 20th edition of the international event Photo credit: Benidorm town hall

TOURISM will start to pick up at Easter in April 2021 and recovery should be noticeable by June.
This prediction was made during the International Tourism Forum held recently in Benidorm, the Costa Blanca’s Number One holiday destination.
It came from Gabriel Escarrer Jaume, president of Exceltur – a non-profit association of Spain’s leading travel associations – who is also CEO of the Melia Hotel chain.
And recovery will come thanks to the Covid-19 vaccine that is already being rolled out in the UK, Benidorm’s foremost tourist market, Escarrer said.
“If the vaccination campaigns are carried out according to plan and if the Administrations play their part, by 2022 we should equal the results of 2019,” the Exceltur president said.
Escarrer argued that the vaccine alone was not enough to refloat the tourism sector and called for better coordination from both the European Union and Spain to create a common health and travel policy.
“The EU’s response to the pandemic was tremendously uncoordinated and totally insufficient,” he said.
“Countries closed their borders without rhyme or reason and the reopening was the same, or worse.  Some countries opened, others demanded PCR tests and yet others imposed quarantine.”
The solution, Escarrer said, was a “Health Schengen” and a traffic light system inside Spain showing the incidence of Covid-19 in each province, a system previously suggested by Toni Mayor, president of the Costa Blanca hoteliers’ association, Hosbec.
This was the 20th edition of Benidorm’s International Forum with a record number of 337 participants meeting to discuss the UN’s Agenda 2030, Sustainable Development Goals linked to tourism and, inevitably, health and safety.
Participants who attended via Zoom included Ximo Puig, president of the Valencian Community and Carlos Mazon, president of Alicante’s provincial council, the Diputacion.
“The pandemic has plunged all of humanity into crisis, not only tourism,” declared Benidorm’s mayor Toni Perez during the Forum’s opening ceremony.
“In this edition we are focusing on finding answers to the new challenges of a post Covid-19 period,” he said. “Today the7 are getting nearer thanks to investigation and science.”


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Written by

Linda Hall

Originally from the UK, Linda is based in Valenca and is a reporter for The Euro Weekly News covering local news. Got a news story you want to share? Then get in touch at editorial@euroweeklynews.com.

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