The crisis caused by the pandemic is over for travel agencies, not only in terms of turnover but also in terms of job recovery. This is the view of both the Spanish Confederation of Travel Agencies (CEAV) and the Corporate Association of Specialized Travel Agencies (ACAVe), according to the news portal hosteltur.
Last June, agencies managed to exceed the pre-pandemic turnover figure for the first time in 27 months and in terms of employment, most of the workers who were in ERTE have been reinstated. At the end of August, only 1,823 workers were affected, 1,613 of them covered by the RED Mechanism, launched in April by the Government for what has been the sector most affected by the health crisis.
In 2020, agencies were without any activity for many months due to the lockdown and with 90% of their staff in ERTE and have only been able to reactivate as international borders have been reopening to tourism.
The president of CEAV, Carlos Garrido, is convinced that we can speak of "having left behind the pandemic crisis because we no longer notice any fear in the client when traveling, neither in the issuing nor in the receptive tourist".
"Spectacular sales volume"
Jordi Martí, president of ACAVe, agrees, highlighting that this summer has been "spectacular the volume of reservations" that has been registered and that he predicts that it "will continue in the coming months".
Martí even speaks of "irrationality" in sales due to the behavior of customers, which confirms the "champagne bottle effect" of the demand contained by the pandemic and that has allowed to exceed the sales levels of the summer of 2019.
Precisely, thanks to this summer season, the president of ACAVe takes for granted that the one that "without any doubt has been the worst crisis of travel agencies" has been overcome.
He recalls that after the declaration of the pandemic, in March 2020, the agencies "were with zero sales, but with the business structure of 2019. It is something that had never happened in life".
However, two years later, "with the optimism that the summer season has given us, we are already in the normal dynamics", he says.