Jet2 has issued a Spain travel warning amid growing unrest and resentment towards UK tourists. Holidaymakers in the European Union holiday hotspot have faced protests from angry locals, the airline and travel operator has revealed.
Steve Heapy said: “[They are protesting] incompetent and impotent governments that have failed to regulate unlicensed tourism. They’re not stupid, they know tourism generates income for the economy, and tourism’s been around for decades – licensed tourism.”
“We operate licensed tourism. We send people to hotels. It’s easy to work out how many people there will be. And that model has worked very well for decades. You could predict what the demand for tourism would be,” he said.
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“The number of properties will drop by 95 per cent overnight,” he warned. “That will mean the protests stop. [Otherwise] these protests will get bigger and bigger. They will start to affect our destinations. They will start to put people off travelling. This will get worse and worse,” he said.
“To be honest, I don’t blame people for being upset about it and protesting. I’d probably do the same if it happened in my area.” The CEO spoke out after Majorca, Lanzarote, Tenerife and mainland Spain – including Barcelona, Malaga and Madrid – were rocked by protests and demonstrations.
In some cases, Spain has told UK tourists to “go home”. Mr Heapy has blasted ‘incompetent governments’ over their failure to address the escalating anti-tourism protests in Spain, as the country preps to introduce more stringent rules affecting travellers in 2025.
TTG Media reported Mr Heapy’s comments from a Jet2 press conference. Speaking at the operator’s annual conference in Paphos, Cyprus, Mr Heapy said “it is not the case per se” that residents in destinations such as Barcelona and Mallorca are fighting against tourism, as is widely reported by the mainstream media.
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