Escarrer: "It is the ideal time to rethink post-COVID tourism"

The president of Exceltur and vice president and CEO of Meliá Hotels International, Gabriel Escarrer, defended the transformation to a more experiential and sustainable tourism model, supported by digitization, after COVID-19, with new tourism and employment policies, and more public aid to companies.

“Exceltur considers it to be the” most ideal time to rethink post-COVID tourism, “Escarrer said, according to the EFE agency.

Escarrer recalled that tourism has been one of the sectors that has suffered the most from the consequences of the pandemic, which in the last 21 months has stopped generating about 170,000 million euros of direct and indirect activity, about 90,000 million in foreign currency, with a drop in tourism GDP of 69% in 2020, and around 350,000 fewer jobs and as many workers in ERTE.

“This pandemic also forces us to reflect and analyze the new demands of the public,” warned Escarrer. The tourist demands “safer and more empathetic tourist scenarios and proposals with the aspirations and values of local societies.”

For Escarrer, it is time to open a debate that addresses how to face the challenges of the Spanish tourism sector, from digitization to assuming with greater conviction and commitment the desire for sustainability, accessibility, respect for local identity attributes, defense environmental and climate change.

Escarrer highlights the importance of “trying to be the locomotive sector that drives economic reactivation again”, through employment policies and public support that help companies to recover and boost their competitive capacities, within a new and essential framework of collaboration and public-private co-management.