Is the recession affecting Benidorm now?

Plenty of room for more sunbeds

In the lead up to Easter, "Hosbec" the hoteliers association claimed that hotels rooms in Benidorm were 90% full over the Easter week, but several businessmen have disputed this claim. Sergio Gambi, in the tourism sector said that "these numbers are mathematically impossible - the Holy week is classified as 5 days - Thursday to Monday and the 90% claim actually only applied for Saturday and Sunday". Many Spaniards from Madrid descended on Benidorm for the "Semana Santa" but although Monday was a holiday here in the Valencian community it was not in Madrid, therefore most drove back on Sunday evening. Booking were apparently one of the weakest in years - in the past hotels only accepted booking for four or more days over this period but many were taking one night reservations this year in order to fill up rooms. There is a consequence to these claims made by Hosbec Gambi stated. "Hosbec's strategy of unwarranted optimism is wrong because the Department of Tourism will tell us that if we are doing that well there will be no need to invest more in promotion of the area".

An unusually quiet Tapas Alley

To back these claims up made by Gambi, figures released by the Town Hall showed that less waste and less water was consumed compared to 2011 indicating that there were indeed less visitors- 8.3% less waste was collected and 5.3% less water was used. Benidorm's tourism Councillor Juan Angel Ferrer said that the data left no doubt as a reliable indicator that there was a lower influx of visitors to the town than the previous year. However, despite these somewhat disappointing figures he said that Benidorm was "well above" other Spanish seaside resorts. However, despite this optimistic statement, many tourism related businesses are struggling from shops to bars, restaurants and taxi's.