spain's economy and tourism

Spain Tourism

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• Bartolomé Deya Tortella 3  

Spain, located in southeastern Europe, has been a full member of the European Union since 1986 (Fig. 1 ). The country covers a total area of 505,990 km 2 (195,364 mi 2 ), with 47,332,614 inhabitants, and a GDP per capita of US$30,840 (€25.170). Since 1975, the headquarters of the World Tourism Organization has been in the capital city, Madrid.

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Instituto Nacional de Estadística. 2020. www.ine.es

Moreno Garrido, A. 2007. Historia del Turismo en España en el siglo XX . Madrid: Síntesis.

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UNWTO. 2020. UNWTO World Tourism Barometer . Madrid: World Tourism Organization.

World Economic Forum. 2020. The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2019 WEF.

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University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Spain

Bartolomé Deya Tortella

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Correspondence to Bartolomé Deya Tortella .

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School of Hospitality Leadership, University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie, WI, USA

Jafar Jafari

School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

Honggen Xiao

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University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, QLD, Australia

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Tortella, B.D. (2024). Spain Tourism. In: Jafari, J., Xiao, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Tourism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01669-6_186-3

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01669-6_186-3

Received : 26 February 2021

Accepted : 13 February 2023

Published : 06 June 2024

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-319-01669-6

Online ISBN : 978-3-319-01669-6

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01669-6_186-3

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01669-6_186-2

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01669-6_186-1

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Tourism activity reached 155,946 million euros in 2022, 11.6% of GDP, which was 3.9 points more than in 2021. The characteristic branches of tourism generated more than 1.9 million jobs, 9.3% of total employment.

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• Nota informativa. Revisión Estadística 2024 de las Cuentas Nacionales
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The Spanish Tourism Satellite Account (STSA) is a summary statistic composed of a set of accounts and tables, based on the methodological principles of national accounts and presenting the different economic parameters of tourism in Spain, for a given reference date. The current base is 2010.

It essentially consists of three types of components:

• - Supply accounts and tables, in which an attempt is made to characterise the production and cost structures of tourism companies.
• - Demand tables which intend to characterise, from an economic point of view, the different types of tourists, national tourism compared with international, the types of goods and services demanded, etc.
• - Tables that interrelate supply and demand, which facilitates obtaining some integrated measurements of the contribution of tourism to the economy via variables such as GDP, production or employment.