After two years of traveling restrictions and outbreak scares, people are heading back to popular tourist destinations that have been vacated during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
One of these tourist hotspots is the country of Spain, offering visitors a taste of everything: sightseeing, cuisine, shopping and nightlife.
Spain’s Tourism Industry
About 2.2 million people work in the tourism industry in the country. Before COVID-19, Spain had surpassed 125 million yearly visitors.
Janan Batteh, a tour guide for American Institute for Foreign Study, was born and raised in Florida, but in 2000, she bought a one-way ticket to Spain and never looked back.
After visiting her sister who was studying abroad in Spain, she fell in love with the country and moved there within the year.
Batteh was set on becoming a tour guide in Spain, given her education in the field.
“I’ve always been interested in tourism,” Batteh said.
She majored in communications and tourism at the College of Charleston and worked at The Westin there after graduating.
“I think the main thing is to work in this type of field, you have to be very intuitive,” she said. “The communications classes I had [in school] were very, very good to kind of prepare me for this type of job because a lot of classes were about ethics or culture, cultural and communication styles, with different cultures.”
Batteh is based in Valencia, Spain, where she now lives with her family.
“The most rewarding experience is seeing how people come here and experience how there's another culture in another country, where they are living in an entirely different experience,” Batteh said. “And when they leave, I feel like what they've gained is going to actually help them make the decision about what they want to do with their future.”
Nuria Marin Munoz, another AIFS tour guide, was born and raised in Spain. She is based in Granada, Spain.
Munoz began working for AIFS nine months ago.
"When I was younger, I wanted to be in a profession that was related with tourism," she said. "I love learning different languages; I love to be in contact with people."
She said she loves to learn about the cultural differences between Spanish people and people from abroad. With Americans, she notices the differences in dining and meal times and educational programs.
Tourism in Barcelona
Barcelona, the capital of Spain’s Catalonia region, has incredible sightseeing destinations that set the city apart from other cities in Spain.
It is one of the top most visited cities in Spain, and Barcelona's Basilica de La Sagrada Familia is the most visited attraction in all of Spain.
Since the pandemic, face masks are no longer required in most indoor facilities, including restaurants, museums, stores and landmarks.
Educational tours and families on vacation are returning to the country.
Barcelona in the media
Batteh said that she notices an influx of tourists during holidays and sometimes when Spain is featured in the media.
“If somebody kind-of famous or an influencer is posting a picture in front of a certain area in Barcelona or a series or movie is filmed in a certain place, that destination becomes more popular,” she said.
One of these incidents was when the Woody Allen film Vicky Cristina Barcelona debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008. The film features Scarlett Johannson, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, among others. That year, Cruz won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the movie, and the movie won the Golden Globe award for Best Film - Musical or Comedy.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona feeds into the idea of a passionate, adventure-filled European summer that many tourists seek to this day. The mature themes of the movie drew in many single young adults during the late 2000s.
Batteh says there is another movie that the students of AIFS study abroad claim to be more influenced by to come to Spain.
The Disney movie The Cheetah Girls 2 came out in 2006, after the first movie of the trilogy was well-received by the channel’s young audience. While the first movie was set in New York City, the second movie follows the high school girl band — The Cheetah Girls — as they make a trip to Barcelona to partake in a music competition and make a name for themselves abroad.
Most of the students in this University of Florida’s College of Journalism program are between the ages of 18 and 22, making them a part of the target audience for Disney channel in 2006.
(Personally, I’ve watched the movie a million times and it was definitely a factor for me to apply to this program.)
“Past groups of mine have been obsessed with The Cheetah Girls,” Batteh said. “I have had to take entire tours to the famous fountain where they told me that The Cheetah Girls was filmed or something.”
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