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Abstract
The objective of this article is to analyse the evolution of the hotel sector in Spain in the first half of the twentieth century. More specifically, it seeks to study the tourist hotel industry within the Spanish tourism system which began to take shape during these years, marked by different political and economic contexts. Therefore, this tourist hotel industry is studied within the development of the tourism sector during these years in Spain. By the beginning of the twentieth century, tourism was understood as a social practice and it was an industry that was gaining importance within the Spanish economy.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Business Registers of Santander (BRS), Sheet 346.
2 Business Registers of Guipúzcoa (BRG), Sheet 431.
3 Business Registers of Madrid (BRM), Hoja 2.345.
4 For an exhaustive analysis of the shareholding, see Arribas (2007, pp. 37–104).
5 General Administration Archive of the Government of Spain (GAAGS), Culture, (3) 49.2, Box 12.104, ‘Notas referentes al desenvolvimiento de la hostelería de Madrid, entre los años 1901 al 1913’, by Luis Scatti. See also Arribas (2007, pp. 236–250) and Moreno (2015, pp. 27–32).
6 BRS, Sheet 658, and Municipal Archive of Santander, Construction Works, F-311, nº11, ‘Memoria del proyecto, 25 de febrero de 1916, by Javier González de Riancho’.
7 Business Registers of Barcelona (BRB), Sheet 10.785.
8 We should note that this guide does not include all of the hotels that existed nor, of course, the whole accommodation supply in Spain. However, it can constitute a valid instrument in order to gain an idea of the situation of the Spanish hotel industry in 1916.
9 (BRB), Sheet 11.628.
10 Data elaborated using the Guía de hôteles de España (1916) and Guía Oficial de Hoteles (1929) of the PNT.
11 In 1935 there were 48 establishments and in 1912 only 30. Guía ilustrada para el forastero (1908, p. 36).
12 Clerget, ‘Le mouvement’, p. 571.
13 GAAGS, (03)049.002TOP.22/57.306-52.704-Box 14.419: report by Luis Bolín of 15 December 1939.
14 The number of foreigners visiting Spain in 1932 was 201,914, in 1932 there were 200,346 and in 1934 190,830.
15 Official State Gazette, 14-4-1939.
16 In 1941, for example, these increases were as follows: 10% in luxury hotels and first-class A, 25% in first-class B and second-class hotels, 50% in third-class hotels, 25% in luxury hostels and 50% in the rest of hostels and inns. GAAGS, (03)049.002TOP.22/44.203-52.704-Box 10.583.
17 Due to the serious tourism crisis in Mallorca, in 1941 the closure and sale of the Gran Hotel de Palma was announced. This was the best and largest hotel in the city with more than one hundred rooms. GAAGS, (03)049.002TOP.22/44.203-52.704-Box 10.834.
18 Foreign tourists with a passport; the data exclude Spanish residents abroad and counts all foreigners who declared to be in transit with a permit of more than 24 hours. The number of foreign tourists between 1901 and 1928 has been estimated using the 1929 database of the Patronato Nacional de Turismo (the official body responsible for tourism in Spain). Between 1929 and 1934; data referring to overnight visitors provided by the Memorias del Patronato Nacional de Turismo and used in Jáinaga’s (Citation1932) estimates of the balance of payments. Between 1936 and 1939: the number of foreign tourists registered in each province according to the Spanish Institute of Statistics: Anuario Estadístico de España, 1950.
19 The sources used to elaborate this figure are as follows. For the Italian case, Battilani’s data have been used. For the years 1922–1930, for the data from border surveys, see Bollettino mensile dell’Ente nazionale industrie turistiche, Statistica del turismo, N ° 1, 1934. The first estimates were made at the end of the nineteenth century limited to foreign customers, whose influx brought important foreign exchange reserves to the country. They proposed an evaluation of foreign visitors on the basis of railway tickets sold abroad and at border stations and landings in Italian ports, aimed at building the Italian trade balance. Visitors entering by car were counted on the basis of temporary car imports and assuming three passengers per car. The problem is that in 1931 the methodology of the border survey was changed and the figures provided by the fascist government on foreign tourists rose drastically because they also included the workers who lived on the borders with France, Switzerland and Austria who entered the foreign country in the morning and returned to Italy in the evening. For the years 1931–1940 Battilani proposes an estimate that tries to exclude these workers from the count of tourists. After the Second World War, when the widespread use of the car caused the share of the latter to increase rapidly, the Institute of Statistics proposed its own evaluation of the phenomenon (these workers accounted for 20% of those who crossed the border in 1948 and 50% in 1957), thus making the new series more reliable. In the Battilani series, a reduction of 20% is applied to the 1930s, equal to that of 1948, although it could still be overestimated.
Otherwise, the series ‘arrivals of foreigners at hotels’ could be used, which is much more stable over time but which does not count those who stayed in houses, therefore it is an underrepresented series. Battilani also presents this series in her article, but we prefer the series presented here in accordance with the series from France and Spain. In fact, for Spain, we have used the data from Tena used in Figure 1. They are foreign tourists with a passport; the data exclude Spanish residents abroad and counts all foreigners who declared to be in transit with a permit of more than 24 hours. This source has been previously described in detail. The data for France have been drawn from the records of the National Tourism Office. They refer to foreigners who stayed in the country for at least one day (24 hours), so day trips are excluded. They include tourists entering by car. Trimbach (Citation1938) analysed, at the time, the causes of the large differences in tourist arrivals between France and Italy. Among other causes, he cites the low budget for French propaganda, the political and social turmoil in this country or the introduction of the tourist lira according to the decree of December 20, 1936.
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Mercedes Fernández-Paradas
Dr. Mercedes Fernández-Paradas is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Malaga (Andalusia, Spain). His research is in the service sector and in the Spanish economic history.
Carlos Larrinaga
Dr. Carlos Larrinaga is Associate Professor of Economic History at the University of Granada (Andalusia, Spain). His research is in the history of tourism, railways and the service sector. He is currently leading an interdisciplinary project on the history of tourism in Spain and Italy in the twentieth century, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and ERDF.