As at the end of February each year, the city of Barcelona comes to a halt to host the main technological exhibition on the planet: the Mobile World Congress. The monetary impact is such on the Catalan capital that hardly any economic sector isn’t affected in one way or another. In the majority of cases, this impact is logically beneficial since the show attracts hundreds of attendees from tens of multinationals who promote business and consumer generation in the city while the event takes place.
As the saying goes: ‘Money talks’. In this case, Barcelona’s property market during the MWC ‘is on fire’. Both the hospitality and the holiday rental sectors register record-breaking figures during the week the international exhibition is on for, specially in the vicinity of the Fira de Barcelona. Subsequently, hotel room prices skyrocketed 227% during the last days of the show which meant all rooms in the city averaged over €300.
How long do attendees stay and how much do they pay?
According to the property website eBooking, Mobile World Congress attendees stay 4 days on average. Report figures also show the day prior to the exhibition’s opening -yesterday being Sunday- is when most hotel check-ins happen. Furthermore, these figures show the number of bookings start to resemble 2019 records, the last year prior to the pandemic, when 100% hotel occupancy was achieved.
The hotel guild informed 19,000 rooms have been booked this year up until this point in time, far from the 26,000 rooms booked for 2019 but greatly exceeding last year’s 10,500 since still being influenced by the coronavirus pandemic.