The Growth Gap: Customer Experience Lessons from Spain

By Jenő Zsiga, General Manager for Europe, BARE International

Growth does not only expand markets. It changes customers. The organizations that recognize this early, and adapt faster than expectations evolve, will be better positioned to define coming years of competitive advantage.

Success Can Become a Blind Spot

Ask most leadership teams what keeps them awake at night and the answers are familiar: economic uncertainty, artificial intelligence, talent shortages, geopolitical risk. Rarely does anyone mention a word that sounds overwhelmingly positive: growth.

Yet sustained growth creates one of the most underestimated business risks I have encountered during my career. It changes customers faster than organizations often change themselves. What once felt exceptional becomes ordinary. What once differentiated a brand becomes expected. Expectations evolve while internal assumptions can remain surprisingly static.

Over the past three years, while leading BARE International’s expansion in Spain, I have seen this pattern emerge across industries. What began as a local growth opportunity became a front-row seat to one of Europe’s most interesting business transformations.

Spain Is Not Just Growing. It Is Becoming More Complex.

Spain’s recent economic performance tells a remarkable story. According to CaixaBank Research, the country welcomed 97 million international visitors in 2025 and recorded €135 billion in tourism expenditure. The same analysis projects Spanish tourism GDP growth of around 2.5% to 2.7% in the coming years. (1)

Those figures are impressive. But for executives, the more important question is what that growth does to the customer experience. Every visitor creates dozens of interactions across hotels, restaurants, retail stores, airports, banks, healthcare providers, automotive dealerships, and more. Each one is a moment where expectations are either confirmed or challenged.

Growth is not simply increasing demand. It is increasing the complexity of delivering consistent experiences across every touchpoint. That is a very different leadership challenge.

The Real Shift Is Happening in Customer Expectations

One statistic from CaixaBank Research captures this transformation particularly well: luxury tourism represents only around 3% of international card spending, yet accounts for 20% of in-person spending by foreign tourists in Spain. (1)

This is more than a tourism insight. It reflects a broader shift in how value is created. Increasingly, organization depends on customers whose expectations are shaped by the best experiences they have anywhere, not only by direct competitors.

A traveler who experiences seamless digital check-in at a luxury hotel expects similar efficiency from an airline. A client who receives highly personalized service from a private bank may expect the same level of attention from a healthcare provider. Customers no longer compare businesses within industries. They compare experiences across their lives.

For executives, this changes an important assumption: competitive advantage is no longer built solely by attracting more customers. It is increasingly built by understanding the customers who create the greatest long-term value, and by delivering consistently against their rising expectations.

The Hidden Cost of Growth

Growth has a habit of hiding operational problems. Revenue increases. Locations expand. Customer numbers rise. From the boardroom, everything can appear healthy. Meanwhile, at the front line, execution may begin to drift.

Consider two flagship stores belonging to the same international retailer. They sell the same products, follow the same brand guidelines, use the same technology, and receive the same training. One exceeds expectations. The other feels merely acceptable.

Leadership may assume the explanation lies in location or demographics. Often, the difference is execution. Did employees create confidence? Did they actively listen? Did they recommend the right solution? Did they make customers feel valued?

These moments rarely appear clearly in executive dashboards. Yet they influence loyalty, conversion, and reputation every day. The greatest operational risk is rarely poor service in isolation. It is inconsistent service.

The Growth Gap

Over the past three years, I have returned to the same observation. I think of it as the Growth Gap: the distance between how quickly customers evolve and how quickly organizations adapt.

Expectation Gap: customers change faster than businesses understand them.
Execution Gap: service begins varying between locations, teams, and channels.
Insight Gap: leadership relies on assumptions instead of observing real customer experiences.
Performance Gap: loyalty weakens; conversion slows, and competitive advantage quietly erodes.

Most organizations do not notice these gaps until commercial performance begins to suffer. The strongest organizations identify them much earlier.

Three Years in Spain Reinforced One Conviction

This year marks three years since BARE International established its office in Madrid. During that time, according to BARE International internal operational data, the team has welcomed 13 new clients, expanded its network to more than 4,200 active evaluators across Spain, and supported customer experience programs throughout the Mediterranean region. (2)

Those milestones matter not simply because they reflect growth, but because they have allowed us to observe thousands of customer interactions across retail, hospitality, financial services, healthcare, automotive, restaurants, airports, and luxury brands.

Across these industries, the leadership questions remain consistent: How do we deliver greater consistency? How do we protect our brand while expanding? How do we anticipate changing expectations rather than react to them? How do we ensure strategy becomes reality at the front line?

Three Questions Every Leadership Team Should Ask

Before investing in the next technology platform, launching another customer initiative, or expanding into a new market, executive teams should pause and ask:

Are our customers changing faster than our organization?
Where is execution least consistent across our business?
What assumptions about our customers have we not challenged recently?

The answers may reveal opportunities more valuable than the next marketing campaign or operational initiative.

The Organizations That Learn Fastest Will Lead Next

Markets will continue evolving. Artificial intelligence will transform industries. Customer expectations will continue to rise. What will distinguish tomorrow’s market leaders is more fundamental: their willingness to keep learning.

Looking back over the past three years, that may be the most important lesson Spain has reinforced for me: growth creates opportunity, but understanding creates advantage. The businesses that combine both will define the next decade.

Explore More

At BARE International, we help organizations replace assumptions with evidence through customer experience measurement, mystery shopping, operational audits, and market research. Our work gives leaders objective insight into how customers actually experience their brands across locations and channels.

Sources

CaixaBank Research, Tourism in Spain 2026: New Opportunities for Sustainable Growth / Spanish Tourism Sector: From Post-Pandemic Rebound to Sustainable Growth(2026). Data referenced includes international visitor arrivals, tourism expenditure, projected tourism GDP growth, and luxury tourism indicators.
BARE International internal operational data (2023–2026), including Madrid office milestones, client growth, evaluator network expansion, and regional program activity.

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