Spain's International Visitors Up 78.3 Per Cent On Same Month In 2020
Spain News
Published: 03 September 2021 18:03 CET
The number of international travellers to Spain has risen by 78.3 per cent, compared to the same month last year.
According to a recent press release from the INE (Spanish Statistics Institute) on September 1, Spain saw 4.4 million international tourists visit the country in the month of July this year.
Visitors from France led the stampede of tourists visiting Spain, with a total of 874,189 making the trip. This accounts for 19.9% of the overall total, an increase of 46.6 per cent compared to July 2020.
Germany and the UK were the subsequent countries with the most travellers visiting Spain. 707,332 tourists travelled from Germany, 64.5 per cent more than in the same month last year.
UK tourists accounted for 46.5 per cent more than in the same month last year, with 555,183 tourists descending on the country.
Additionally, INE data shows that Spanish residents made 14.9 million hotel bookings in July 2020, which is compared to 14.8 million in the previous year.
According to the stats, domestic tourism during the month of July has also increased slightly this year compared to July 2019, with figures rising from 5.7 million to 5.8 million domestic tourists.
“The summer has been very good. We have hotels that have even done better than in August 2019,” the president of AC Hotels by Marriott, Antonio Catalon, told El Pais.
Although international tourism has risen, international tourists actually spent less money. Spain saw a 60 per cent decrease in spending, bringing figures down from €28.3 million that was spent in July 2019, to €11.5 million that was spent in the month of July this year.
July may have been a good month for Spain regarding tourism, but the first six months of this year saw the number of tourists visiting the country plummet by 25.8 per cent compared to last year.
Furthermore, the figure shows that arrivals from international tourists almost doubled compared to 2020, from 2.4 million to 4.3 million in 2021, but have decreased by 5.5 million compared to 2019.
The Balearic Islands proved to be the top holiday destination for international tourists, with 1,320,144 visitors. This accounted for 30 per cent of all arrivals across Spain and was followed closely by the Catalonia region with 814,310 (18.5 per cent) and the Valencian region with 607,214 (13.8 per cent).
Visitors from Germany equated to the majority of tourists visiting both the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands, but in Andalusia, it was the Nordic tourists who were the majority with 87,166 visiting the region.
Madrid on the other hand was most definitely the hot spot destination for Americans, with 46,459 of them visiting the city in the month of July.
Although all of these numbers are promising, the pandemic has hit the travel industry hard and to date, the 2020-2021 period has been the worst season, with the lowest number of arrivals recorded over the last two decades.
To help the country get ‘get back to normal’ Spain, just like other countries, have been administering a vigorous vaccination programme. To date, 71.5 per cent of the population have been fully vaccinated, with 77.3 per cent having received at least one vaccine.
As far as positive cases and fatalities are concerned the Ministerio de Sanidad’s latest stats issued on September 3, show that since the beginning of the pandemic there have been 4,877,755 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 84,795 fatalities.
Source
https://ine.es/en/daco/daco42/frontur/frontur0721_en.pdf
https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/spains-tourism-increases-by-78-this-year-compared-to-2020-most-tourists-coming-from-germany-france-uk/
