Spain attracts the second most number of foreign tourists in the world. A leap of over eight million more in 2024 has in some quarters fed a hope that the country could hit the 100 million mark in 2025; this would require 6.2 million on top of the 2024 total. Given respective growth rates, Spain might overhaul the world leader, France, within the next two to three years. The tourism minister, Jordi Hereu, appears to almost be willing this, while there are those aghast at the prospect of 100 million, as much as anything because it is a psychological landmark number.
Despite the constant discussion about and agonising over the seemingly unstoppable increase in tourist numbers - some of these explainable by distribution to the low season (as politicians and tourism industry sources never tire in wishing to explain) - kudos is to be gained from holding the number-one spot. For years there has been a peculiar rivalry with the neighbours, not just to do with tourist numbers but also because of a Spanish tourism knowhow, innovation and thinking that we are led to believe the French lack.
Up to a point this is historical, dating back to the sixties when Spain stole a march by going all out for a mass tourism partly enabled by Europeans bypassing France and driving across the border to sunny Spain. The Spanish had innovated, the French hadn’t until certain responses came, such as the creation of the world’s largest nudist resort in Cap d’Agde. The French knew full well that Franco wouldn’t have been about to permit an equivalent and so hoovered up a German FKK market.
The Spanish Peninsula wasn’t the fulcrum of the innovation. Partnerships with newly created tour operators, especially in the UK, placed Mallorca at the fore. And so it has pretty much been ever since, Mallorca and the Balearics in the summer contributing a fifth or more of all Spain’s foreign tourism. It was Mallorca where true tourism leadership was fostered, the knowhow eventually to be exported globally as hotel groups pursued expansion strategies. Today, so a narrative goes, it is Mallorca that leads the global challenge of tourism sustainability.
Debatable though this certainly is, it is a way in which Spain, courtesy of all of the input from the Balearics, presents itself as a benchmark, a reference for the rest of the world to admire and learn from. This is the bigger narrative. Spain is thus the perpetual world champion of tourism evolution. The French? Nah!
Physical confirmation of this champion status is an office pile in the centre of Madrid, the headquarters of the UN’s World Tourism Organization (WTO). Spain has only one UN HQ, and it’s for tourism. Enough said. When there was talk a few years ago of UN Tourism, as it is also referred to, upping sticks and relocating to Saudi Arabia, the Spanish machinery cranked into gear to ensure this didn’t happen.
The WTO, criticised by some for being pointless or useless, or both, can’t count on total global support. The UK isn’t a member. Nor is the US, and this has nothing to do with Trump. Nevertheless, it is a body that carries a great deal of prestige and has offered benefits to Spain’s tourism politics. This has come from a closeness and not just because the tourism ministry is a short walk from the HQ. A particular benefit came when a Mallorcan who was secretary-of-state for tourism, Bel Oliver, was sacked over a cock-up to do with safety certifications during Covid. Officially, she had been offered a UN post, but no one believed this.
Spain has made public its misgivings with the current secretary-general of the WTO, the Georgian Zurab Pololikashvili. A closeness to the Saudis was a reason. Spain wasn’t alone, and Georgia’s government eventually decided to withdraw its support for him. There has therefore had to be an election for a new secretary-general, Spain and other countries having accused Pololikashvili of offering “favours” ahead of the vote. To what extent these may or may not have influenced the election - if indeed there were any - the outcome is one that represents what may come to be viewed as a definitive shift in the global tourism leadership stakes.
Shaikha Al Nowais is from the family that owns Rotana. Nasser Al Nowais was a co-founder in 1992 of this Abu Dhabi-based hospitality group that has numerous hotels in the Middle East and elsewhere. She has triumphed at the expense of Mexico’s Gloria Guevara, a former secretary of tourism with the Mexican government and an ex-president of the World Travel & Tourism Council, which endorsed her nomination.
Guevara has been heavily involved with the Saudis and their tourism ambitions, and the Saudis are seeking to learn ever more, not from Spain but from the UAE. Dubai has been moving closer and closer to assuming a global leadership. Having a secretary-general of UN Tourism doesn’t confirm this, but it certainly doesn’t do any harm. Spain will be ever more relieved to have clung on to the HQ. For now, that is.