The Governor of the Bank of Spain, Pablo Hernández de Cos, has asked the Government to improve the “active policies” of employment to favor employability in the tourism sector, “coordinated with the system of benefits and unemployment subsidies”, in order to facilitate the activation of the unemployed.
During his speech at the Hotusa Forum, De Cos explained that in an economy with high unemployment such as the Spanish one, this would help reduce the labor shortage perceived by 42.5% of tourism companies, according to a study done by the entity, a percentage much higher in the hotel and transport industries, with 55% and 51%, respectively.
In the governor's opinion, employability would also improve with the implementation of policies that favor the supply of rental housing to allow greater mobility of workers between regions,” as well as analyzing the capacity of migration policies to alleviate labor market imbalances.
It would also be necessary to improve the productivity of the sector, which is lower than that of the economy as a whole, for which it would be convenient to reduce the high temporality in employment and also the high turnover, which prevents workers from gaining experience.
In this sense, Hernández de Cos referred to the latest labor reform carried out by the Government, which limited the modalities of hiring for a defined time, and explained that in the tourism sector, the fixed-discontinuous contract went from 11% in 2021 to an average of 20.8% in 2023, above the economy as a whole.
On the other hand, tourism is one of the sectors that presents a greater concentration of employees in the groups of young and low-skilled people, which makes it more sensitive to increases in the minimum wage, which have been very significant in recent years, he added.
In fact, in the last year, salary increases in the sector have been above the rest, and unit labor costs have also grown a lot, which, together with the increase in non-salary labor costs such as social security contributions and low productivity, has raised unit labor costs above the Monetary and Economic Union (EMU) since the beginning of the pandemic.
If this pattern continues, it could end up affecting the price competitiveness of Spanish companies and, in particular, those in the tourism sector, he added.
Hernández de Cos has also asked the Government to approve tax incentives to encourage companies in the tourism sector to invest more in innovation and development, as well as greater public-private collaboration in this and other aspects.
Regarding the energy transition, this is a major challenge for air transport, since, for example, in Spain, 40% of it has to do with tourism, so it is important to provide a stable and predictable framework for said transition that helps companies make decisions.
Here, public-private collaboration is also essential and the focus should be on persevering in improving the quality of the tourist offer and its diversification to reduce the saturation of some destinations and the seasonality that the sector maintains.
