Barcelona Metropolis

Barcelona receives more than 12 million visitors per year for both business and pleasure, who stay in the city for an average of 2.5 nights. The tourism sector is one of the main drivers of economic activity in Barcelona, with 150,000 direct and indirect jobs. It generates 8.6% of the city’s employment and is the fourth-greatest wealth-creation activity, accounting for 7.3% of the GDP. Barcelona is the location of one out of every three tourism companies in Catalonia and almost four out of every six jobs and it collects more than half the revenue from the tourist tax in all of Catalonia.

Tourists truly enjoy the city and half of them return. Most local residents relate tourism with wealth, but complaints about the problems involved are also growing: 59.9% of Barcelona’s local residents think that this city has reached the limit of its capacity and the districts with the most visitors, Ciutat Vella and Gràcia, want less of them.

A foreign man about 37 years old flies into El Prat Airport to spend about five days in the city after organising a holiday trip by its own. This is the majority profile of the tourist in Barcelona, according to data from the study Perfil i hàbits dels turistes a la ciutat de Barcelona 2017 [Tourist Profile and Habits in the City of Barcelona 2017], issued by the Barcelona Tourism Observatory. According to the same survey, 86% of the hotel tourists came from outside Spain and more than half (52.11%) came from a country in Europe, while 34% came from elsewhere in the world.

Barcelona is one of the most important tourism and business travel destinations in the world. In 2018, the city had over 12 million tourists and 30 million overnight stays in in hotels, hostels, tourist apartments and housing used for tourism (HUT). Two out of every three tourists stay in hotels. In the last 30 years, the demand for hotel accommodation has increased fivefold and has gone from 1.7 million tourists in 1990 to 9.1 million in 2018, and from 3.8 million overnight stays to 19.3. This demand has not stopped growing every year, except for two dips. The first came in 2008, with the beginning of the financial crisis, and the second in 2017, when Barcelona suffered the attack on the Rambla in August and witnessed the events of 1st October. Remarkably, hotels and housing used for tourism amount to 85.5% of the accommodation available. While the former receive 19.3 million overnight stays, the latter get more than 8.5 million, though with many less tourists, since stays in HUT are longer (up to 3.75 nights on average compared to 2.1 nights at hotels).

According to the Housing Census of 2018, Barcelona has 152,046 vacancies in a total of 10,486 places of accommodation. Over 38% (38.5%) of the vacancies are in housing used for tourism and 47% are located in hotels and hotel-apartments. The Eixample district has 37% of all tourist accommodation vacancies (56,326), and together with Ciutat Vella (27,436) has over half (55.1%) the available vacancies in the city. Sant Martí and Sants-Montjuïc also have a significant amount of vacancies and together account for one fourth of those in the city, while Nou Barris and Sant Andreu have little in the way of vacancies available.

First in international cruises and conferences

Barcelona is near the top of many international rankings. In 2017, it was the sixth most visited city in Europe and the 23rd most visited among 100 cities in the world, according to the Top Cities Destination Ranking by Euromonitor International. The European Cities Marketing Benchmarking Report 2016/2017 ranked Barcelona fifth in Europe in terms of international overnight stays, while Trip Advisor rated it the sixth most attractive destination in the world for tourists in 2017. Also in 2017, Barcelona’s 2.7 million cruise ship passengers enabled it to hold on to its spot as the top cruise ship port based in Europe and the Mediterranean and the fourth greatest in the world. With 47.3 million travellers, Barcelona’s airport, El Prat Josep Tarradellas, had the seventh most travellers and grew the second most (7.1%) in Europe, according to the Airport Traffic Report of 2017.

Barcelona is also a leader in business meetings and broke records in 2018. According to the Barcelona Convention Bureau, the economic impact of Barcelona’s conferences and conventions rose from 1.851 billion euros in 2017 to over 1.901 billion in 2018. The city hosted 1,728 meetings (including conferences, seminars and conventions) that involved 2,393,252 overnight stays, or 7.4% more than the year before and up to 15% for conferences. For the first time, the representatives’ average stay was almost five days.

According to the ranking of the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA), Barcelona is the only city that is not a country capital and has still ranked among the top five in the number of international conferences in the last 19 years. Even though it dropped from the first to the fourth position in terms of the number of international conferences hosted (163), this year it was the top city in the world regarding the number of representatives attending those conferences (135,000).

A lot of work at low pay

The tourism sector generates 8.6% of the employment in the city of Barcelona and is the activity responsible for the fourth most wealth creation, accounting for 7.3% of the city’s GDP. By the end of 2018, there were 96,257 people affiliated with social security, after creating 20,000 jobs in just six years. Salaried jobs make up 87.5% of this total, followed by 12.7% self-employed jobs. If we consider a broader definition of the sector, including the transport of passengers, the organisation of conferences, artistic activities or some sporting activities with a significant impact on tourism, the number of jobs approaches 150,000. There have been 30.9% more jobs in the last 10 years, a period in which the city has grown 7.9% in job creation. At the end of 2018, the tourism sector included 8,754 companies with salaried workers, accounting for 11.5% of those in the city. Barcelona is the location of 36.7% of the tourism jobs in Catalonia, which is 3% more than the city’s total share of employment in Catalonia (33.3%). Barcelona is also the location of 29.3% of the companies with Catalan wage earners dedicated to tourism.

In 2018, the hotel industry was the second largest economic sector in Barcelona with the highest employment contract volume in the city, with a total of 216,453 contracts, accounting for 16.7% of the total. Of these employment contracts, 16.1% were indefinite and 83.9% were temporary. Broken down by subsector of activity, the highest volume of employment contracts was for food and beverage services (60.1%), followed by accommodation services (32.6%) and travel agencies and tour operators (7.2%). The average annual salary in the hospitality industry stood at 16,708 euros in 2017, which is just over half the average salary in the city (30,263 euros), making it the sector with the lowest wage level and one of those that have experienced the biggest loss of purchasing power since 2010. However, the hospitality industry is one of the sectors with the narrowest gender pay gap, with a difference between men and women (12.3%) almost 10% lower than the average in Barcelona (21.8%).

In 2018, there were 8,946 unemployed people from the tourist sector in Barcelona, which reported a 7% drop, while the city fell by 6%. Despite creating net employment, in recent years the sector has revealed a less favourable trend in reported unemployment than Barcelona as a whole. Since 2012, unemployment in the hospitality industry has cumulatively decreased by 20% and has fallen by 38.2% in the city in the same period. This is partly due to the strong seasonal orientation of the sector and the influx into the tourism sector of unemployed people from other industries looking for better employment prospects.

Tourism and the city: benefits and criticism

Tourist activity produces diverse impacts and assessments for the different actors involved, both among those actively participating in it (the tourists) and those receiving it, meaning the residents of Barcelona. Tourists give it a score of 8.8 points to the city and almost half (46.8%) repeat the experience, according to the study Perfil i hàbits dels turistes a la ciutat de Barcelona 2017 [Tourist Profile and Habits in the City of Barcelona 2017]. The five best aspects of the city are its architecture (9.26), its culture (8.91), its entertainment (8.61), its public transport (8.51) and the character and kindness of its people (8.47).

The Online Reputation Index (iRON), issued by the Tourism Laboratory of Barcelona Provincial Council, awarded its best grade (8.91) in 2017 to the city’s attractions, while accommodation (8.24) and food and drink (8.13) scored lower, but always above 8. Regarding the most popular places, Sagrada Família is the most frequently visited monument in the city, taking in 4.52 million tourists, followed by Park Güell, with 3.12 million, and the Barça Museum, with 1.84 million visitors.

In the local people’s perceptions, the relationship between tourism and wealth is rooted in the idea of Barcelona. According to the Barcelona Tourism Observatory’s study Percepció del turisme a Barcelona 2017 [Perception of Tourism in Barcelona 2017], 57.5% of the people surveyed in 2009 already spontaneously associated both elements, reaching 70.3% in 2017. Over four out of five (83.1%) local residents believe that tourism is beneficial, and three out of every four Barcelonans cites tourism as the sector of the economy that provides the most wealth. Nevertheless, there is an observable trend to be increasingly critical of tourism and the benefits that it represents. The high opinion of tourism has fallen since 2012, when it attained the highest score, with 96.1% of the people feeling that it was beneficial for the city. While the 35.2% of the population now thinks that Barcelona must continue to attract tourists, the 59.9% believe that it has reached the limit of its capacity (and this figure rises to 68.6% among residents of tourist districts). Only people of foreign nationality and residents of Nou Barris have an opinion split almost equally between both options. The rest of the population and the region thinks that Barcelona has reached the limit of its capacity with respect to the services that it can offer to tourists. Only 17.1% of Barcelonans would like to see more tourists in their neighbourhood and 65.8% think that there are enough already.

The effect of tourism on prices is one of the reasons why respondents believe that tourism harms Barcelona. Eight out of 10 respondents think that visitors drive up prices in Barcelona, especially in the restoration and rental of homes. The Barri Gòtic and Sant Pere, Santa Caterina, the Ribera and Vila de Gràcia are the districts that most clearly see this rise in prices due to tourism (around 80%), while in Nou Barris the percentage has fallen by 15%.

Compared to 2016, the perception of tourist behaviour has worsened. Half of the people surveyed say that tourist behaviour is good or very good, whereas 14.5% say that it is bad or very bad. This negative view reaches 38.6% in the Barceloneta district. Complaints about bad behaviour have to do with antisocial or rude behaviour (66.1%, which is 10% more than in 2016) and with drunkenness (16.7%, which is 12% less than in 2016).

The challenges of tourism management

The assessment of municipal management of tourism in the city has worsened every year since 2013. While in 2013 almost three out of every four people rated it positively (74.7%), in 2017 this number fell to 40.8%. The least happy residents by district are those living in Barceloneta. Their main complaints focus on the mismanagement of tourist apartments (20.5%) and poor management in general (18.3%).

In 2018, the city raised more than half its revenue from the tax on stays in tourist establishments throughout Catalonia. In the 2017-2018 period the figure reached 56.5 million euros, of which 30.65 million were collected by establishments of the Barcelona brand. Hotels are the main contributor to income tax (19.8 million euros), followed by housing used for tourism (HUT) (8.2 million euros). Hotel revenue has fallen by one million euros and the amount from tourist homes has increased by two million, which is mainly due to the increase in the rate from 0.65 to 2.25 euros per person per night in these establishments in 2017. Barcelona’s cruise ships provide 1.2 million euros, and youth hostels 900,000 euros.

The tourist tax is a tool for promoting sustainable quality tourism and for protecting, preserving, recovering and improving tourist resources. For two years, Barcelona City Council has managed half this tax while the city received 34% until 2016. Between 2015 and 2019, more than 22 million euros levied from the tax on tourist establishments (IEET) have been allocated to projects for improving spaces and services for all residents for the purpose of offsetting the negative effects of tourism in the city.

In 2018, 9.6 millions euros were earmarked for the fight against illegal accommodation, district-improvement projects, cultural offering enhancement and other activities. This line of action has been bolstered by the expansion in 2017 and 2018 of regular bus lines coming from and going to the city’s beaches (D20, V15 and 59), the Pla de Convivència in Ciutat Vella, the Pla de Places de Gràcia and the civic agent service for regulating high traffic spaces such as the Sagrada Família and Ciutat Vella or the spider web, which serves to track data to the network and is one of the pillars to detect establishments that do not have a license.

Since 2016, the number of ads for unlicensed tourist use has fallen from 5,875 to 272, and 4,900 apartments have been ordered closed. The year 2018 ended with 95% less illegal tourist apartments in Barcelona. Since the launch of the shock plan in 2015, according to data from March 2019, municipal teams have evaluated 17,000 homes advertised on 140 different websites.

With these and other measures, the Strategic Tourism Plan 2020 (approved in 2015) is being launched to address such a complex phenomenon, with its multiple challenges. The plan aims to respond to it to ensure sustainability and reconcile the interests of the different actors involved: local residents, tourists and professionals from the sector.