A report by Turisme Comunitat Valenciana has said that in the last two weeks over one million British tourists have logged on to holiday web portals checking prices and destinations on the Costa Blanca for a late summer holiday.
They say that a further 75,000 foreign tourists, with residences in the province, have also searched on flight portals with the intention of buying flights to the Costa Blanca between September and December.
Of that figure, 42,573 are Germans, 27,696 from the United Kingdom and 4,834 Belgians.
After these, the most active nationalities in search of shuttle flights to the Costa Blanca are the Norwegians, Swedes, Portuguese, Dutch, French and Italians.
Jet2com, Tui and easyJet are already offering the possibility of trips and flights and want to resume operations in July.
The total stoppage of the tourism sector had lethal consequences for the Costa Blanca, a loss in excess of 80% of the total tourism of the Community, with losses of one billion euros as 1.5 million tourists were stopped coming in April 2019.
Neither can we hold very much optimism for the medium term, with most establishments saying that they will wait until June or even July due to lack of reservations.
The Campanille hotel in Alicante became the first establishment to open in Alicante yeterday, along with the Ibis in the EUIPO; in Benidorm the hotel La Estación, in Polop the Sleeping Lion and the tourist apartments La Laguna in Rojales.
Most of the hotels in the province say that they will wait for the transition to new phases, perhaps until July 1, when freedom of movement will be fully restored, although still with the preventive measures (hygiene and distancing) imposed by the fight against the covid-19 . However, the opening of the hotels has been a relief and a small boost for a subsector closed since March 15.
The Campanille has 84 rooms, but this week it has 26 reservations, all on the lower floor, but enough to receive the first six clients who arrived yesterday, all for reasons of work reasons. “We have conditioned the entire hotel for two weeks because we thought that we could have opened last week, but in the end it was not possible because of a delay to the phase change.
Today we have six clients, tomorrow twelve. Right now we have all of the equipment, masks, hydrogels, partitions, separation lines and all kinds of information about the covid. Clients have to pre-book and request if they want breakfast, lunch and dinner.
“We offer meals but they are served in the rooms,” they pointed out from the reception where each client receives a prsonal pen to sign at check-in, the only requirement that requires some contact. The keys are kept at the reception to be disinfected and as the rooms are concentrated on the ground floor there is no elevator service.
Hotel chains still do not have a clear opening date, and all hotels continue to work behind the scenes, preparing the establishment but with all of their commercial departments in operation, but reservations continue to be in dribs and drabs.
“We hope that everything will be different in July and the picture has been clarified a little more. At the moment, the immediate market is not moving and, yes, it is going to be a summer where everything is decided at the last minute, ” sources from the sector pointed out yesterday.
