Outsourcing of tourist information services in the COVID-19 context

Spanish legislation allows public authorities to outsource the provision of certain services when they lack their own means to do so Thus, tourist information services are one of the services that authorities tend to outsource because tourism's broad and flexible time margins cannot always be covered by the public sector. In addition, tourism has been one of the economic sectors hardest hit by the recent COVID-19 pandemic, with significant effects on employment, demand and the arrival of international tourists, among others. Thus, the general objective of this work is focused on analysing the effect that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the outsourcing of tourist information services. As such, an investigation has been designed that researches the tenders from the Spanish State Contract Platform from 2018 to 2020. The results seem to suggest a positive trend and that COVID-19 has had a slight influence. The research also seems to indicate that public administrations do not use the Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) code adequately in their tender processes, although it seems to be being corrected.