The End of 'Business as Usual'? Reimagining Barcelona Tourism after COVID-19

This paper examines the impact of Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) on tourism in Barcelona, identifying the pandemic as a crucial turning point and window of opportunity for redefining the sector and reimagining Barcelona’s relationship with tourism. Throughout the pandemic, Barcelona’s tourism sector has experienced an unprecedented drop in visitors and revenue. The city must embrace new strategies for tourism and development in order to remain resilient in the face of this crisis. Cultural tourism offers both a short-term opportunity for economic recovery and a longer-term solution to the city’s pre-existing sustainability issues. In addition to capitalizing on Barcelona’s wealth of cultural resources to attract ‘proximity’ tourists, cultural tourism affords future opportunities to reduce the negative externalities of mass tourism and to reimagine a more sustainable tourism model for the city. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the paper weighs the present need to promote tourism’s potential contribution to economic recovery against the future challenges of post-Covid-19 tourism and Barcelona’s need for greater sustainability. We include qualitative analysis based on press and document analysis of local newspapers and city government and tourism sector documents, as well as quantitative analysis of existing economic and tourism data and the results of a residents’ survey undertaken through the SPOT project (EU-H2020). In doing so, we highlight the role cultural tourism may play in Barcelona’s inclusive growth after Covid-19, addressing prior sustainability issues and promoting a more equal distribution of tourism’s benefits. This paper also contributes to the ongoing dialogue between researchers and government and tourism actors regarding tourism’s role in local development and the future of the city, thus contributing to future strategies and policies.