Maroto announces that in September he will be able to resume the Imserso trips

The Imserso travel program for the elderly, which has been suspended since March 2020, when the pandemic broke out, I could return with the last blows of summer, in the month of September, According to the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, this Monday.

According to Maroto during a press conference in Castellón, in September “We will be in a position to implement the Imserso trips”, given that the vaccination rate will have advanced, although he has also indicated that if it were possible to advance the date, it would be made public.

The minister has assured that the Government is working so that the travel program for the elderly can return as soon as possible with the necessary security measures to avoid infections. “The elderly are being the first to be vaccinated and, therefore, we trust that the program can be resumed this season,” said the minister in her speech, collected by Europa Press.

The Imserso trips were suspended in March when the first state of alarm was decreed and the population was confined. Initially, they were suspended until September, but the advance of the regrowths after the summer prevented them from resuming. This has led to an almost total halt for many hotels and destinations whose billing largely depended on of this national demand in low season.

Adapt

According to Maroto, they are working together with the tourism sector to adapt the specifications of this program. Part of the sector, in fact, He had demanded that these funds, which are now invested in subsidizing the trips of the elderly, be allocated to other groups, for example to health workers, to reward them for their work during the pandemic.

In this sense, Maroto has pointed out that some of the complaints from the tourism sector will be taken into account “to improve not only the experience of the elderly, but also in the area of ​​suitability that this program represents for hoteliers”. Part of the sector has always criticized that this is a model that condemns hoteliers, due to the low profitability it provides.

The 2020 Imserso program had a total of 900,000 places, which were grouped into three different lots: the one on the peninsular coast, the one on the islands and the one for inland tourism. The value of the contract exceeded 1,142 million euros and included the contribution of the Imserso (about 232 million, 20.39% of the total) and that of the users themselves (in total, 910 million, representing 79.61%) .