The Tourism Forum for Sun and Beach Destinations continued today with an initial presentation by Dr. José Antonio Donaire on the challenges of contemporary tourism, followed by various presentations of studies on new formulas for public management of tourism linked to issues such as sustainability, housing for tourist use, the deficit in the local provision of public services and the legal framework. These presentations were given by academics from the University of La Laguna (Tenerife) and the University of Girona.
The main topic of the second day was the financing of tourist municipalities.
Álvaro Carrillo, from the Secretariat of the Alliance of Tourist Municipalities (AMT), explained that “the Alliance of Tourist Municipalities has commissioned a study from the consultancy firm PriceWaterHouse Cooper, which has analysed a total of 40 countries, mainly in the European Union, and 15 outside the European Union, with the aim of presenting it to the Central Government and requesting a review of the current definition of tourist municipality”. Currently, the concept of Tourist Municipality is linked to the number of second homes and not to the floating population, which means that only a total of fourteen are currently considered Tourist Municipalities and, of these, Salou is the only municipality in the Alliance of Sun and Beach Tourist Municipalities that meets these criteria. Bearing in mind that the eight municipalities that make up the Alliance of Tourist Municipalities account for 20% of all tourist overnight stays in Spain, this shows that the current definition is outdated.
Two other parameters analysed in this study were the burden of services (waste collection, public transport, police, medical services, infrastructure and parking), which in Spain falls mainly on the local councils and the Autonomous Communities, as well as a compilation of the different tourist taxes levied by the different Autonomous Communities and cities. This same exercise has been carried out with the 40 countries analysed and it has been possible to see how in the majority of countries there is greater economic involvement at the level of the Central Government and the European Union.
The conclusions of the study are:
1. The system of participation of tourist municipalities in State taxes is complex, given that it establishes numerous indices and variables that make it difficult to determine and evaluate the amount allocated to a specific municipality.
2. The funding of Tourist Municipalities is limited as it does not take into account the seasonal population that also enjoys public services.
3. In the international best practices analysed, it is the central government that assumes the responsibility for increasing peak season services.
4. The tourist tax could help municipalities to finance the tourism industry to encourage more sustainable tourism and distribute the costs associated with tourism more equitably but, on the other hand, it may discourage tourists from visiting their destination. In this sense, it is considered more appropriate to include the tax as an overall tax rather than as an individual tax.
The conclusions and the new proposal for the definition of Tourist Municipalities will soon be presented to the Secretariat of Tourism of the Spanish Government.
Anna Garriga, director of the Climent Guitart Chair, explained that “We are facing a structural problem that requires a revision of the Law of Local Treasuries”. With regard to the financing of tourist municipalities, the set of studies presented confirms that the financial imbalance of tourist municipalities has been diagnosed for Catalonia for 30 years and shows a persistent imbalance; it is a structural problem. In 1998, the average per capita debt of tourist municipalities was 2.3 times higher than that of non-tourist municipalities. The Budgetary Stability Law forced the reduction of this debt, although it has meant almost a decade without public investment, which aggravates the underfunding that tourist municipalities suffer. Garriga explains that “It is clear that tourist municipalities use all the financial instruments at their disposal, the most important of which is IBI. The per capita collection in tourist municipalities is almost double that in non-tourist municipalities: more receipts and more fees per receipt” and concludes that “this financial imbalance in tourist municipalities could be corrected with a 20% reduction in the full quota of IBI receipts, doubling the tax rate for second homes and the tourist tax”.
