Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty three since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic.
Speaker 1: Today's main story a coastal tourist town in Spain one
Speaker 1: specialized in packing beaches and nightclubs, appealing to young people
Speaker 1: on a budget who piled themselves into cramped hotel rooms.
Speaker 1: How does a place like that reinvent itself in the
Speaker 1: age of social distancing? But first, here's what happened in
Speaker 1: virus news today. Europe is facing a resurgence of coronavirus infections,
Speaker 1: but the region's leaders don't have much appetite to return
Speaker 1: to the stringent restrictions on movement that helped control the
Speaker 1: pandemic in March and April. On Thursday, German Chancellor Angela
Speaker 1: Merkel urged European leader's stork together to avoid reviving lockdowns,
Speaker 1: calling instead for unified action. The uptick in cases in
Speaker 1: recent weeks has been blamed on social gatherings and travelers.
Speaker 1: Targeted containment measures like clamping down on nightclubs and mandating
Speaker 1: masks have yet to show much of an effect. Hong
Speaker 1: Kong will kick off a campaign to test its entire
Speaker 1: population for the novel coronavirus on September one. It's the
Speaker 1: first such effort attempted outside of mainland China. Hong Kong's
Speaker 1: chief executive Carrie Lamb said the mass testing blitz will
Speaker 1: last as long as two weeks and will be aided
Speaker 1: by China. Unlike similar drives in the Chinese cities of
Speaker 1: Wuhan and Dalian, this will be voluntary. Finally, economist Nuriel
Speaker 1: Roubini said today that the global economy faces a risk
Speaker 1: of a slow recovery or even another slump unless a
Speaker 1: vaccine is found. Speaking on Bloomberg Television, Rubini predicted that
Speaker 1: the shape of the recovery, which some predicted to be
Speaker 1: a V a sharp uptick after a sharp drop, could
Speaker 1: take the shape of a U or even a W.
Speaker 1: He's stressed that finding a vaccine and more government stimulus
Speaker 1: is necessary for a strong recovery. Rubini is famous for
Speaker 1: having predicted in two thousand six the collapse of the
Speaker 1: housing market in the US and now for today's main story.
Speaker 1: One thing the pandemic seems to have rendered obsolete, at
Speaker 1: least for now, is mass tourism. Beach towns lined with
Speaker 1: hotels that boast hundreds of rooms are struggling in a
Speaker 1: socially distanced age. One tourist hotspot in Spain that once
Speaker 1: drew throngs of young people is trying to reinvent itself
Speaker 1: for a future of tightly controlled and intimate trips. Jeanette
Speaker 1: Newman reports the sound of summer. Those waves are rolling
Speaker 1: onto a beach in Benny Dorm, a town on Spain's
Speaker 1: Mediterranean coast, from June to August. Year after year, there's
Speaker 1: barely a free inship sand to be found on this beach.
Speaker 1: Sunbathers lineup towel to towel for miles. Crowds swell up
Speaker 1: and down the beach front promenade. Skyscraper hotels crammed with
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of visitors tower overhead. The cityscape is
Speaker 1: the iconic image of the summer high season in Europe.
Speaker 1: Even though many people, particularly in the US, I've never
Speaker 1: heard of Benny Dorm, It's among the most popular destinations
Speaker 1: in Spain. That's no small feet. Spain is one of
Speaker 1: the most visited countries in the world. Benny Dorm started
Speaker 1: to become a hot spot decades ago. It was among
Speaker 1: the initial destinations in Europe for package holidays affordable trips
Speaker 1: abroad organized by a travel agent. Since then, Benny Dorm
Speaker 1: has become a mecca of mass tourism. More than four
Speaker 1: million people visit the town's beaches and bars every year.
Speaker 1: Most of them are from Spain and Britain and stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's just st play cricket, got lack an end
Speaker 1: of seasons ship, you come, just lots and stuff so.
Speaker 1: Chris Ward is a twenty five year old from Leeds, England.
Speaker 1: On a recent summer afternoon in Benny Dorm, he and
Speaker 1: his friends shown O were sipping a pint at the
Speaker 1: Crown Pub. Chris has been to Benny Dorm more than
Speaker 1: a dozen times for bachelor parties and end of season
Speaker 1: trips with his cricket and rugby teams. He says it's
Speaker 1: a unique and crazy place. I don't I don't know,
Speaker 1: you can't describe it. I always say there's there's there's
Speaker 1: loads of places it well that's look better than Benny Dorm.
Speaker 1: But there's no where I've been that's like Benny Dom,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: just it's just not there's just you say things that
Speaker 1: you'll never say anywhere at else, Chris laughed. He declined
Speaker 1: to elaborate. What happens in Benny Dorm. Apparently stays in
Speaker 1: Benny Dorm. It was shown his first time here during
Speaker 1: a pandemic. I knew it's a little bit same, but
Speaker 1: I think I quiet like there's like it's been quite
Speaker 1: chilled out where less. There's not as many peoples this
Speaker 1: summer in Benny Dorm, As in so many places around
Speaker 1: the world, there's space where there used to be crowds, silence,
Speaker 1: when there used to be sounds and caution and angst
Speaker 1: instead of freewheeling abandoned. To ensure social distancing on Benny Dorms,
Speaker 1: Levantevitch officials have marked off large squares in the sand
Speaker 1: with blue rope. Each space can hold a maximum of
Speaker 1: four people. Sunbathers have to reserve in advance. Many of
Speaker 1: the spaces remain vacant because a crowded bats and everybody
Speaker 1: has in their mind these simities. But now as you
Speaker 1: can't see, it is a very organized feet. Everybody needs
Speaker 1: to know where they must go. That's Larry Bilbao. She's
Speaker 1: the director of the city's tourism board looking out over
Speaker 1: Levante Beach. Larry tells me that many other cities haven't
Speaker 1: put in place similar safety measures during a pandemic. She says,
Speaker 1: Benny Dorm had to defy a stereotype, otherwise it would
Speaker 1: risk an outbreak and even more people would steer clear
Speaker 1: with this. With this situation, you can see that everybody
Speaker 1: is happy and everybody is in the area. Since it
Speaker 1: reopened in Midsummer, there's been on average seven thousand people
Speaker 1: on the beach each day. That compares to twenty people
Speaker 1: in normal times. Some people in Benny Dorm's tourism industry
Speaker 1: told me that those norm more times will eventually return
Speaker 1: once there's a vaccine. Levante Beach will once again have
Speaker 1: twenty five thou sun bathers, bars will go back to
Speaker 1: being jam packed, and tourism in the city will once
Speaker 1: again be in mass. Others, though, I think the crisis
Speaker 1: has changed us. Ramon Martinez and his family owned four
Speaker 1: hotels in Benny Dorm. Even when we have a vaccine,
Speaker 1: he thinks many people will still crave more space than before.
Speaker 1: We know that is coming. A lot of change, for example,
Speaker 1: in in our hotels. Like I told you before, the
Speaker 1: maximum people in one room is too passion. Ramon is
Speaker 1: renovating two of his hotels. He plans to build only
Speaker 1: double rooms. That's a shift for many Benny Dorm hotels.
Speaker 1: Their business models about volume, attracting a lot of lodgers.
Speaker 1: By offering affordable rooms, clients get a discount, for example,
Speaker 1: when they had an extra bed in the room, so
Speaker 1: three people stay in a double room and four in
Speaker 1: a triple. That appeals to friends keen to cut down
Speaker 1: on the cost of a weekend away, or to families
Speaker 1: with children. Ramon's renovation to right size his rooms is
Speaker 1: going to take a couple of years. Right now, he
Speaker 1: has his hands full managing his hotels during a pandemic.
Speaker 1: Ramon has outfitted the entrance to his Hotel Presidente with
Speaker 1: mats that are coded and disinfectant. Thermographic cameras discreetly scan
Speaker 1: the reception area. They're looking for anyone with a temperature.
Speaker 1: Using artificial intelligence, the cameras can also detect if someone
Speaker 1: isn't wearing a face mask. So far, Ramon says that
Speaker 1: hasn't been a problem. Everyone is wearing the mass so
Speaker 1: I mean the movery important thing is that you wear
Speaker 1: your marks. We can do everything you want. We can
Speaker 1: put everything but your mass and you if you are crazy,
Speaker 1: we can we can knock it to at least. If
Speaker 1: Ramon sounds a little muffled, it's because he himself was
Speaker 1: wearing a mask while we were speaking. Visitors to Benny
Speaker 1: Dorm say they welcome all the safety measures. In some ways, though,
Speaker 1: the measures to control the masses in hotels and on
Speaker 1: the beaches are responding to a problem that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: There are no crowds. Benny Dorm feels empty occupancy, and
Speaker 1: Ramon's hotel Bresidente is around. Normally it would be around full.
Speaker 1: Ramon and others had been expecting this summer to be bad,
Speaker 1: but then it got worse. In mid July, coronavirus cases
Speaker 1: started to rise again in Spain. The UK ordered British
Speaker 1: travelers who returned from Spain to self quarantine for two weeks.
Speaker 1: The news hit Benny Dorm particularly hard. Around of visitors
Speaker 1: to the city are from the UK. Cancelations overwhelmed the
Speaker 1: city's hotels. The surprise announcement also caught some British residents
Speaker 1: mid vacation, including Bernie Schroka and her brother John Kelly.
Speaker 1: They were having one of their final pints in a
Speaker 1: Benny Dorm bar earlier this summer, preparing to head back
Speaker 1: to England to self quarantine. Well, it's off because we
Speaker 1: wouldn't come out. Does a quarantine got it back? You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah about it? Yeah. Bernie is a teacher and doesn't
Speaker 1: start working until the fall. The quarantine won't disrupt her
Speaker 1: plans too much, but John works in maintenance at a hospital.
Speaker 1: His two week absence will leave the place a bit
Speaker 1: short staffed. They both say they're frustrated the quarantine order
Speaker 1: was a surprise, but they understand that the pandemic makes
Speaker 1: everything less certain. Now I've been coming to bant down
Speaker 1: Snow I've never seen as I've never seen a discore.
Speaker 1: Does it make you, does it make the vacation less enjoyable?
Speaker 1: Or how does it change for us? I'll just go
Speaker 1: sorry for them that are working, you know, they happen
Speaker 1: to opay and it's to us here and the expense
Speaker 1: they must be going. It's a sign of the times
Speaker 1: for the world's battered tourism industry. Music blaring at two
Speaker 1: people sitting in a near empty bar. Benny Dorm is
Speaker 1: trying to adapt while the city awaits for the masses
Speaker 1: to return. There might confordulate it probably would help you,
Speaker 1: but that it might mean it s Risto. That was
Speaker 1: Jeanette Newman, and that's it for our show today. For
Speaker 1: coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world,
Speaker 1: visit bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus and if you like
Speaker 1: the show, please leave us a review and a rating
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to
Speaker 1: help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily
Speaker 1: edition is produced by to for four or Hez, Jordan Gospoure,
Speaker 1: Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was
Speaker 1: reported by Jeanette Newman. Original music by Leo Sidran. Our
Speaker 1: editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.