After leaving behind the state of alarm, mobility data has skyrocketed in Spain. The first unrestricted weekend, there was a 33% increase in hotel bookings and, in Madrid alone, 12% of the population left the city. Data shows that families are resuming old activities: back to the streets, lunch, dinner in restaurants and bars, travel, and shopping.
The movement of the population in Spain has changed in specific places in relation to the period before the pandemic. As of today, many places already reach, and even exceed, normality before the pandemic.
Source: Our World In Data. COVID-19: Google Mobility Trends.
This upturn in domestic tourism is a drastic change compared with the situation of foreign tourist arrivals. The Government has launched a campaign to attract international tourists under the name ‘You deserve Spain‘ aimed at Markets in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Poland, and Sweden. The goal is to recover 40 to 45 million foreign travellers, around half of the 84 in 2019.
Despite the difficulties imposed by countries such as the United Kingdom to visit Spain, such as the obligation to keep quarantine, almost 60% of reservations for this summer already belong to foreign travellers. Everything indicates that this is due to the progress in the population vaccination process, which will bring about the reactivation of tourism in a generalised way. If the established plan is fulfilled, according to a study by the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE for its abbreviation in Spanish), tourism in Spain will contribute 50% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of what was generated in 2019, a very favourable scenario.
External Environment
There is no doubt that the external environment was one of the most affected by lockdown as it fully depends on mobility and advertisers reduced investment. However, it was able to adapt to the circumstances with messages of support and recommendations of the measures addressed to workers who took to the streets. Despite those tough months, its recovery has been very remarkable; improvement came as mobility increased, and brands were able to transform and have not stopped betting on this medium.
The return to normalcy has also been accompanied by the resurgence of commercial activity thanks to urban mobility and outdoor advertising has acquired a key role for economic recovery. Some data from the DGT (Directorate General of Traffic in Spain) reflect that large urban centres in Spain are beginning to approach the mobility percentages they had on the same dates in 2019.
Visitors to outdoor spaces such as local parks, national parks, public beaches, marinas, dog parks, plazas and public gardens have increased by more than 100% in several European countries.
Source: Our World In Data. COVID-19: Google Mobility Trends.
The same growth has been seen in stations, which includes public transport centres such as the underground, bus, and train stations.
This is evidence of significant increase in the mobility of the population in Europe, leading to satisfactory reactivation of the external environment. Additionally, the FEDE-Aepe launched a campaign on the 25 of May to help with this reactivation, coinciding with the first weeks of the end of the state of alarm and the reduction of mobility restrictions. They have called it “Somos de Exterior” (“We prefer the outdoors”) with the claim ‘’Get your advertising out on the street ’’, accompanied by messages and humorous images that reinforce the idea.
By: Alicia Diaz