For example, the Catalan association of the family business of the retail Comertia is confident that sales in 2022 will close with a 9.6% increase in sales compared to 2020, the last before the outbreak of the coronavirus. All employers are still looking forward to this new discount period, although they hope it will be short.
At the state level, the Spanish Confederation of Commerce (CEC) predicts a “brief but intense” start to sales. “The liberalization of the sales periods has caused the original concept to be distorted,” the president of this employer, Rafael Torres, lamented in a statement. And he adds: “Discounts are now available all year round, and this has an impact on sales campaigns, which have a foaming effect, fast but very short.”
The CEC estimates that the Christmas campaign has resulted in a 15% lower turnover than in 2019, a figure worse than the initial forecasts, which placed it 10% below.
Positive Christmas in Catalonia
On the other hand, the Catalan trade has closed the Christmas campaign with good feelings, despite the new restrictions approved by the Generalitat, which limit the capacity of the shops to 70%, although in most cases they do not reach the figures of the 2019. However, in Catalonia both large chains and shopping centers and the smallest companies in the sector claim to have exceeded the levels of 2020, when the third wave of the pandemic greatly reduced activity during the holidays.
In some cases, however, this Christmas’s revenue has been above pre-pandemic levels: Comertia announced a 5.3% increase in sales in December compared to the same month in 2019. Food, accessories and household products and leisure were the sectors most benefited by the rises, while catering was the one that suffered the most, with a drop in turnover of 16% over two years back. The limitation of capacity, which in the case of restaurants and bars was 50%, the curfew in many municipalities and the high rate of contagion led to the cancellation of many reservations in one of the most calendar activity.
Looking ahead to January and Easter week, however, Comercia’s forecasts are less optimistic. Even without real data, the association estimates a 4.7% reduction in revenue compared to two years ago, which they hope to offset precisely with the sales that begin this Friday.
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