Sustainable tourism interest increases post pandemic year - Interest in more sustainable tourism increases and people's enthusiasm to travel again after more than a year of pandemic.

The pandemic has led us to rethink many aspects of our day-to-day lives. The way we work, relate, live or simply spend our time. After several months locked at home and many others without being able to travel or do it alone within our communities or countries, there are many people who claim to have become aware of a different model of travel, more sustainable and not so harmful to the environment.

However, with current vaccination rates advancing rapidly in most European countries, the possibility of returning to travel is an ever closer reality. Given this fact, there are many other people for whom sustainability is not so relevant and who burn in desire to get back on a plane and travel the world as soon as they can.

And the impossibility of traveling has multiplied the desire to do it. In this sense, according to a study published by The Vacationer, 25% of the people surveyed thought to take what is called "revenge tourism", that is, they plan to travel more than before the onset of the pandemic.

Sustainable tourism interest increases post pandemic year

However, with regard to sustainable tourism, another study by Booking.com, shows how 91% of Spanish travelers think that traveling in this way is vital. In addition, 56% say that the pandemic has aroused their desire to travel more sustainably in the future.

"Over the 6 years that we've been doing this study to see how the awareness about the importance of sustainable travel has been growing steadily, both among our customers and clients and between our partners, has been very inspiring," says Marianne Gybels, Director of Sustainability Booking.com. "There are good intentions on all sides, but there is still much work to be done for sustainable travel will be an easy option for all the world," he adds.

Sustainable tourism interest increases post pandemic year: Sustainable tourism according to the International Tourism Organization is a tourism model that takes full account of current and future economic, social and environmental impacts to meet the needs of visitors, industry, the environment and host communities.

In fact, the Government of Spain is developing the Sustainable Tourism Strategy of Spain 2030, which aims to transform our model for a more sustainable one. Tourism is essential for the Spanish economy, as it constitutes an important source of income (it contributes 11.7% of GDP) and generates a high number of jobs.

And although there is a greater social awareness regarding the impact of tourism on the environment, the price and cost of traveling or staying when we go on vacation continue to play a fundamental role when choosing the place and the way to travel.

Sustainable tourism interest increases post pandemic year

The study cited above by The Vacationer points out that 62% of travelers when planning their holidays are mainly focused on the cost of these, while sustainability and carbon footprint, are issues that are decisive for only 4% of these travelers.

Dr. Srikanth Beldona, a professor at the University of Delaware, told CNBC that "sustainable travel will have to cost more if they are to reduce their carbon footprint, and there are indications that a niche market may emerge for this."

Sustainable tourism interest increases post pandemic year: In connection with the latter, the above-mentioned report of Booking.com he states that there is an important business opportunity and that there are many establishments that have adapted to obtain the sustainability seal. There are currently more than 30 certifications officially approved by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC), Green Tourism and EU Ecolabel.

James Thornton, managing director of Intrepid Group, a travel company specializing in sustainable tourism, also told CNBC that " traveling responsibly is not about making sacrifices or staying at home. It's about planning trips with care to be able to enjoy the experience you are looking for, while leaving a positive mark on the destination you visit"

Sustainable tourism interest increases post pandemic year

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Spain debt

When will Spain have to start reducing deficit and accumulated debt during the coronavirus and at what level they will be when the European moratorium on fiscal discipline expires

After more than 15 months fighting the economic consequences of the pandemic of coronavirus through stimulus measures, of an unprecedented increase in public spending and have put in place a recovery plan valued at 800,000 million euros, the European Union is once again being plunged into the debate about when you should re-apply the rules of fiscal discipline, Brussels temporarily suspended at the start of the crisis.

Thus, in March 2020, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, activated the temporary moratorium on deficit and debt limits established by the Stability and Growth Pact of the European Union, as a way to facilitate countries to get into debt and exceed budget limits to pay for stimulus measures to avoid the destruction of jobs and business fabric as a result of the pandemic.

Faced with the risk of damaging the recovery with the reactivation of fiscal discipline, the then president of the Eurogroup, the Portuguese Mário Centeno, demanded last July that the EU not blindly follow the deficit and debt objectives before the first voices within the 27 who demanded a return to the austerity policies that characterized the Community response to the previous economic crisis.

The European Commission has repeatedly defended not to reapply the budgetary restrictions until at least 2022, stopping the attempts of some so-called frugal countries to stop the increase in public spending, especially in southern Europe, such as when the German government demanded in March that Spain begin to make adjustments to curb the rise in the public deficit and debt or before the Austrian proposal to prioritize debt reduction.

By the time, these requests have fallen on deaf ears, as evidenced by this week's meeting of the Eurogroup, which unanimously agreed to maintain the moratorium on tax rules in 2022, as announced by the vice-president Spanish economic, Nadia Calviño, in an interview with The Newspaper in which he assured that no country is defending removing stimuli and endanger the economic recovery.

Calviño stressed that the ECB had stressed that it will maintain an expansionary monetary policy to facilitate stimuli, although he said that the time has come to begin preparing for the return of fiscal rules. "Although it is not a priority issue in the short term, Spain has to take advantage of intense growth to start reducing debt and deficit ratios to GDP this year," the vice president told the Catalan newspaper.

Calviño's statements respond to the high levels of public deficit and debt that the country has accumulated during the coronavirus crisis, which are among the highest in advanced economies. Thus, Spain closed 2020 with the largest deficit in the EU, close to 11% of GDP, and with the fourth highest level of debt in the EU countries, above 120% of GDP, only behind Greece, Italy and Portugal.

Since the beginning of 2021, both references have moved disparate. With regard to the deficit, the latest official figures from the Ministry of Finance up to April showed a reduction in the State deficit of 15%, to 1.4% of GDP, due to the increase in tax collection, while the deficit of the general government as a whole increased by 44% in the first quarter, to 1.28% of GDP.

This result at the end of the first 3 months of 2021 motivated the Government to raise its deficit forecast for this year by 7 tenths, to 8.4% of GDP, which it has included in the stability programme for the period between 2021 and 2024 that it sent to Brussels at the end of April. The Executive's estimates foresee a deficit of 5% in 2022, 4% in 2023 and 3.2% in 2024, which means that Spain will not reach the 3% deficit ceiling demanded by the EU until 2025.

If these forecasts are met, it would mean that the country could again be involved in a Community excessive deficit procedure if the EU decides to reintroduce budgetary discipline in 2023 or even 2024. In fact, Spain was under the corrective arm of the Stability and Growth Pact for a decade, exceeding the 3% of GDP ceiling between 2009, at the start of the previous crisis, and April 2019.

Meanwhile, the forecasts of other agencies present a similar picture. Thus, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that in 2021 Spain will reduce the deficit to 9% and 5.7% in 2022 to be around 4% between 2023 and 2026, while the OECD forecasts that it will close 2021 at 8.6% and 2022 at 5.4% and the Bank of Spain places it at 8.2% this year, at 4.9% the next and at 4.3% in 2023, although its most optimistic scenario it stands at 3.3% of GDP.

In this way, all official forecasts suggest that Spain will have to reduce between one and 2.7 points of public deficit compared to GDP in 2023 or 2024 to meet the budgetary targets set by Brussels, which seems like a titanic task, taking into account that the country needed 10 years to recover the balance in its public accounts after the last crisis.

As for public debt, the forecasts are even more pessimistic regarding Spain's chances of being in a position to comply with the debt limits stipulated in the Stability and Growth Pact, which sets a cap of 60% of GDP, when the EU decides to reapply these rules. In fact, the country reached debt levels during the coronavirus that double that target and are the highest since 1900.

After closing 2020 with a debt equivalent to 120% of GDP, the Government forecasts a moderate rate of debt reduction over the next 3 years, predicting that it will reduce just half a percentage point this year and then fall to 115.1% in 2022, to 113.5% in 2023 and to 112.1% of GDP in 2024.

The Bank of Spain is still more pessimistic in their central scenario forecasts, and estimates that the debt will grow this year, although a tenth, to be reduced to 117,9% in 2022 and go back to picking up one-tenth in 2023, while your scenario more negative expected that the government debt will continue to increase in the next 3 years, and will reach a new historic peak in 2023, in a 123,4% of GDP.

For its part, the IMF forecasts that Spanish debt will stand at 118.3% of GDP in 2021, to be slightly reduced to 117.2% in 2022 and to 116.8% in 2024 and then rebound to 118.3% in 2026, although these forecasts do not include the increase in debt at the beginning of this year when the State assumed the liabilities of Sareb, the bad bank that hosted the toxic assets of the Spanish bank during the last crisis.

Meanwhile, the OECD has predicted that the debt will be reduced this year just 3 tenths to fall back again in 2022 to 117.4% of GDP, although it has predicted that Spain will have the highest growth rate in the eurozone during the next 2 years. Whatever the GDP growth in the coming years, the Spanish Government is in the process of negotiating with its European partners a further delay in applying the fiscal rules to avoid further breaches of the Stability Pact.