Tourist spending down in Spain

By Ben Harding

BENALMADENA, Spain (Reuters) - Few Spaniards would sacrifice their annual summer vacation. But while Spain's beaches are still busy, shops and restaurants at its resorts are ominously quiet as the country's economic crisis envelops the tourism industry.

After 50 years of uninterrupted growth, Spain's overbuilt and relatively expensive resorts seem ill-placed to cope with a downturn, at a time of increasing competition from cheaper, less crowded destinations like Croatia and Turkey.

"In 48 years, I have never seen losses like this; tourism bosses I'm talking to have never suffered so much," said Domenec Biosca, president of Spain's Association of Tourism Directors and Experts.

He said that in many parts of the country, tourism is already in deep recession, as both Spaniards and foreigners travel less distance, stay less time and spend less money.

Spain's biggest hotel group, Sol Melia, reported profits fell 41 percent in the first half of the year, while those at business hotel group NH dropped 20 percent.

Revenues in the Canary and Balearic islands have fallen as much as 12 percent this year, Biosca estimated, predicting that such mature destinations will gradually decline in the face of foreign competition, despite lowering their prices.

Benalmadena, a resort near the southern city of Malaga, is one such mature destination.

Its wide strip of golden sand is shadowed by 1970s hotels, high-rise apartments and cul-de-sacs of whitewashed houses that stretch in a 50 km (30 mile) swathe of concrete from Malaga in the east to Marbella in the west.