Hopes lost on tourists traveling from Russia to Catalonia this year
Overall spending from Russian visitors was €1.1 billion in 2019, officials do not expect full recovery before 2023
Catalonia’s tourism sector has lost all hopes for the Russian market for this year. The Catalan Tourism Agency (ACT) has warned that the Ukrainian invasion by Russia will have considerable effects on Catalan tourism.
In fact, authorities are not even hopeful the situation will improve any time soon, as Narcís Ferrer, director at ACT, said to the Catalan News Agency (ACN).
"We will surely not have this Russian market quota in 2022, and we’ll have to see about 2023," Ferrer said to ACN in an interview at the Mobile World Congress.
"If things do not change fast, we will not be able to count on Russian tourism," he added.
Some 795,000 Russian visitors came to Catalonia in 2019, spending up to €1.1 billion. In terms of all nationalities, Russia provided the sixth-highest number of visitors to Catalonia in the last full year before the pandemic.
Main destinations were the Costa Daurada, the ‘golden coast’ south of Barcelona, with the seaside towns of Cambrils and Salou as the key locations, as well as the Costa Brava in the north.
Russians also travel to Barcelona for medical tourism and are considered part of the "premium" tourism sector.
Sputnik not allowed in the EU
Due to the current international situation, Russian visitors also face another problem. So far, Russian planes and airlines are not allowed to fly in European Union airspace.
This is added to previous problems tourists faced when traveling abroad. The European Union does not accept the Russian Covid-19 Sputnik vaccine as a valid shot to travel, therefore visitors were not able to enter Catalonia.
"We had hoped, before the war, that the EU would accept the Sputnik vaccine as valid," Ferrer said.
Costa Daurada's sector expectant
While the ACT has already sounded the alarm, the tourism sector in Costa Daurada is expecting how the situation develops. Tarragona is the first Russian touristic destination in Spain.
For them, Russian visitors are really important despite losing potential in the last years. In fact, in 2019, Russians were the third in numbers of nationality to visit Tarragona's area after French and British tourists.
"Unfortunately, the war stops everything, but we hope the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is solved fast, but tourism is weak and when things like this one happen is quite notorious," Xavier Guardià, spokesperson at Tarragona's Hostel and Touristic businesses federation said to ACN.
Listen to our podcast on the impact of the Ukraine war in Catalonia with voices from those protesting on a daily basis to defend their country.