After one of the best high-season, hotel figures in a decade, over half of the hotels along Costa Tropical are going to close for the low season.

In fact, only 40% of them will remain open despite the Costa Tropical have plenty of sunshine and good temperatures most of the year.

This tendency has been the bane of Costa-Tropical tourism and one that different administrations have tried to break out from… unsuccessfuly.

Those 40% that remain open are relying on foreign tourism; the summer is almost exclusively national tourism. The tourists that keep those hotels that remain open afloat are usually Scandinavians for whom these mild winters are a magnet – for countries where winter nights are so long and days so short, the Costa Tropical with its daytime temperatures in winter around 20ºC, is just what the doctor ordered.

Furthermore, the summer crowds, scarce parking and interminable queues in banks and shops have disappeared and in their place are the much lower hotel prices.

So why don’t more hotels stay open? Well, it’s not just a case of staffing a hotel when fewer rooms are being used is a drain, but also because many use the low season to carry out repairs and renovations. It’s also a time to sit down and design the marketing for the next surge that Easter will bring.

Even the staff need a break, which is why many opt for fijos-discontinuos contracts rather than fijos; i.e. employed all year round. With the former, you get a 3-month break but maintain an income through unemployments benefits. The Government might want to end this arrangement, for obvious reasons, but the hotel management and many staff would prefer that they don’t.

So, who’s closing this winter in the hotel-capital of the Costa Tropical, Almuñécar? Albayzín del Mar, Playacálida and over in La Herradura, Sol Los Fenicios and Best Alcázar. Over in Motril, which despite being the real capital of the Costa Tropical, boasts just a couple, amongst which the Hotel Impressive will close for winter.

It’s also a Catch 22 situation: Hotels complain that there are no off-season leisure attractions but the ones that there are shut down because the hotels are closed. Yes, Los Moriscos Golf Course remains open all year round and is a winter-tourism magnet, too, but who is going to get into their swimming kit and hurtle down a water-park chute in winter? A Swede, perhaps, but you can’t keep that operation running for just a handful of the most adventurous from the frozen north.

Nobody can accuse the coastal tourist boards of sitting around twiddling their thumbs because they attend tourism fairs all over Europe, showing off the wonders of the coast. They even let hotels off local taxes (IBI) if they stay open, which was the case of Sol Meliá when it first opened and why it chose Almuñécar. The deal was no taxes (IBI) for 10 years (I think, although it could have been five) if they stayed open all year round, which they did, but as soon as the number of years agreed upon expired, they started closing during winter (although the hotel building by then had been taken over by a different company).

The coast has a lot to offer in the winter, especially with a Sierra-Nevada skiing season in full swing; you go up there, freeze your unmentionables off in the morning and then sit around on paseo cafeteria terraces enjoying a spot of late afternoon sunshine back down on the coast.

Many places would jump at the chance to enjoy what nature has given to the Costa Tropical, so, come on, there must be a way to keep the damned hotels open and economically fiable.

(Editorial: Costa Tropical)

Keywords: Hotel, High Season, Low Season, Closed, Leisure Activities, Los Moriscos Golf, Sierra Nevada Skiing