According to the new CaixaBank Research Sectoral Indicator, the most energy-intensive branches of the manufacturing industry and the agrifood sector are the ones which suffered the most in 2023. At the other end of the spectrum we find sectors such as hotels and restaurants and the automotive industry, which performed rather well.
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2020 has now been left behind; a year that will be remembered in the tourism industry as the toughest in recent history. In 2021, the fight against the pandemic continues and restrictions on movement and trade are still preventing normal economic activity, hitting tourism-dependent businesses particularly hard. However, the roll-out of the vaccines will provide a turning point once immunity is achieved among the population most at risk. Our projections point to a strong recovery in the sector during the second half of the year, resulting in tourism GDP growing by 80% annually, once again becoming one of the driving forces for the Spanish economy.
The indicators show that the growth rate of Spain’s tourism sector is normalising after the exceptional figures of 2022-2024, driven by the post-pandemic recovery and the consequent rebound in the consumption of services. The trends observed at the end of 2024 are continuing in 2025: the sector remains attractive to a growing number of international tourists, while the presence of resident tourists in local destinations is diminishing in favour of increased prominence abroad. Even so, this year the sector will once again be key for the Spanish economy. According to our forecasts, tourism GDP will grow by 2.7%, thanks to the solid start to the year, the increase in household disposable income, the revival of some European economies and the moderation of tourism inflation.
The tourism sector’s improved situation was palpable by the end of November. The good figures posted in the summer were consolidated thanks to the season being extended to October and part of November. However, this positive trend has been hampered by the emergence of the latest wave of COVID-19 in Spain, related to the Omicron variant, raising doubts regarding the stability of the tourism sector over the coming months, which could see a negative start to 2022.
Based on an anonymised analysis of internal CaixaBank data, we perform an in-depth study of recent patterns in spending on catering in Spain.
The catering sector is continuing its good streak in 2025, with solid growth in spending thanks to the boost from both national and international tourism. Although the pace of growth has moderated compared to previous years, the data show a clear resilience, even after the power blackout on 28 April, which dealt a temporary blow to the sector’s turnover.
Our Sectoral Indicator reflects a widespread improvement across the various sectors in 2024, particularly in some branches of manufacturing, such as the chemicals, pharmaceutical and paper industries, which have benefited from lower energy costs and an improvement in exports. By contrast, the automotive sector has slowed sharply over the course of this year, following the recovery experienced in 2023.
The Spanish economy has shown a positive tone in the opening months of 2025, driven, above all, by the revival of domestic demand. Although growth is expected to be slightly more moderate than last year, the decline in inflation and interest rates will act as important support factors in an international context marked by uncertainty. The CaixaBank Research Sectoral Indicator reflects this buoyancy in the opening months of the year and shows an increase in the number of sectors in expansion, although the picture is somewhat mixed.
With the shock of the COVID-19 outbreak, tourism businesses reduced their activity, destroying a large number of jobs and taking massive advantage of Spain's furlough scheme (ERTE). Tourism supply is now attempting to revive itself. The lifting of mobility restrictions has encouraged a good number of tourist establishments to reopen their doors, even though demand is still low. With the start of the summer season, it is essential for the tourism sector to maintain, and benefit from, its commitment to reactivation as this is the only way to create jobs again.
Due to the pandemic, the current situation of the Spanish economy is very complex. The case of retail is no exception, although it is proving to be remarkably resilient in the face of all the restrictions on opening hours and capacity adopted in order to curb the pandemic. As revealed by the sector’s demand and employment indicators, retail trade is now close to, but below, its pre-COVID level. Despite this, an analysis of CaixaBank’s internal data shows very different figures for large and small companies, as well as for the different branches of activity, confirming that the sector has yet to recover completely.
Rural destinations have emerged as the most attractive choice after the outbreak of the pandemic. Rural areas were a great alternative in the summer for those tourists wanting to travel whilst still maintaining a social distance. As a result, the loss of tourism business in the less urban regions of Spain has been much lower than in more traditional coastal destinations and cities. This article has applied big data techniques to analyse the trends in card payments made by both domestic and international tourists according to the characteristics of the destinations they visited. The results confirm the increased resilience of rural tourism destinations in 2020, suggesting a positive outlook for rural tourism in 2021.
Activity in the real estate market is recovering from its extraordinary slump between March and June. House sales and new building permits have regained much of the ground lost in Q3 2020, a trend we expect to consolidate in 2021. House prices, whose trend is still weak but without any extreme corrections, are expected to follow a similar trend in the coming quarters, ending 2021 with a decline of around 2%.
The sectors most closely related to tourism are digitalising faster than the average for the Spanish economy but there is still a long way to go, especially when compared to other tourism industries in Europe. In the next few years, it will be crucial for Spain’s tourism industry to be able to remedy this situation by means of a clear commitment to digitalisation, which will help to improve its long-term growth capacity. The European NGEU funds are an opportunity to revitalise investment in the digitalisation of tourism businesses after two very tough years for the industry.
The situation in the tourism sector improved considerably during the summer season. Vaccinations have represented a clear turning point, leading to the lifting of restrictions and the recovery of travel in Europe, as well as keeping the pandemic under control. The indicators for demand, supply and even prices confirm a radical change in the situation, not only in Spain but also in the countries around us. This good summer harvest encourages us to be optimistic about the coming months, when we expect to see a consolidation in the recovery that should ensure 2022 will once again be a good year for Spain’s tourism industry.
While economists have been incorporating big data into their analyses for a number of years now, the COVID-19 pandemic has produced a veritable revolution in real-time economics. The latest contribution from the CaixaBank Research team to this revolution is the Real-time economics portal, launched on 8 November 2022.
Josep Mestres Domènech is a lead economist in the Spanish Economy Unit of CaixaBank Research. He has a PhD in Economics from University College London and a Master in Economics from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Before joining CaixaBank he worked as an economist in the Employment and Social Policy Department (DELSA) of the OECD, in the divisions of International Migration and Employment. His areas of study include labour economics, immigration economics and public policy in general. He is currently Analytics coordinator in CaixaBank Research, which includes the Real-Time Economics portal.
Mar is a Data Scientist in the Bank Strategy Department. A graduate in Physics and with a PhD in Remote Sensing, after a few years of postdoctorate work she joined the team of data scientists at KDP (a joint venture between AIA and CaixaBank), where she worked for 2 years as an external Consultant for CaixaBank, before joining CaixaBank Research.
Patricia is a Communications Specialist at CaixaBank Research. She has a degree in History of Art and in English Language & Literature from the Universitat de Barcelona. Before joining the Strategic Planning and Research Division, where she also worked as an editor, she was responsible for content management and website development of CaixaBank Group's corporate websites (such as "la Caixa" Foundation", Criteria and MicroBank). She has also worked in the field of teaching (as an e-commerce lecturer at ESCI-UPF), in literary translation and volunteering.
Marina Tombas Suñé works in the Analytics team of the Spanish Economics Department at CaixaBank Research. She holds a degree in Mathematics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and is part of the WonNow talent program, promoted by CaixaBank and Microsoft. Before joining the bank, she completed an internship at Minsait, where she gained experience in data science projects.
Alberto is a Senior Data Scientist in the Spanish Economics Department. A graduate in Particle Physics from the University of Turin, he was involved in searching for the Higgs boson when working as a doctorate student (University of Turin) with CMS at CERN in Geneva and as a postdoctoral researcher (University of Cantabria). Before joining CaixaBank he worked for 3 years for the consultancy firm AIA and a further 2 years for KDP, a joint venture between CaixaBank and AIA. His work at CaixaBank focuses on exploiting large amounts of data, both internal and from public sources, using machine learning technologies.