Isabel Oliver told TTG she hoped for some growth in the country’s 83 million tourists – but she remained conscious of a number of potential headwinds.

Identifying the UK as the country’s biggest market – 14.8 million British visitors to September, representing a slight decrease of 1.6% – she mentioned Brexit, the collapse of Thomas Cook and the UK’s upcoming general election as having the potential to impact growth.

The UK represents 22% of Spain’s tourism volume and 20% of expenditure.

It was widely reported that Spain was particularly hard hit by Cook’s failure – the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands in particular. In 2018, Spain welcomed 1.3 million Cook customers from the UK alone.

Asked which brands had been moving in to the gap left by Cook in Spain, Oliver said: “We are already seeing other tour operators moving in to this space and taking up seat capacity.

“I have a feeling it will be distributed [quite evenly] between them, which I think would be a good thing. It reduces the risk.”

Oliver revealed in October Spain enacted a royal decree – a bill – to agree a number of provisions for Spain’s tourism industry adversely affected by the Cook collapse.

It includes €15 million for the Canary Islands, €8 million for the Balearic Islands and €200 million for credit loans. There is also €500 million available to “improve the route to market” for tourism companies.

The purposes of the provisions include preventing hotels from closing or laying off staff due to cash loss and tax alleviation on seats.

Meanwhile, Spain has embarked on a tourism strategy based around five pillars: better collaboration between governments and the private sector; promoting sustainable growth economically and socially as well as environmentally; “competitive transformation” of companies; community; and diversifying Spain’s tourism offering.