Malaga Airport in the running as Chinese airline considers three direct flights a week to south of Spain

Air China is considering launching three direct flights a week, all year round to Andalucía, from Shanghai and Beijing.

In an interview on Canal Sur Radio, the Junta's head of tourism Arturo Bernal said the carrier "will have to decide which airport interests them the most", with Malaga, Seville and Granada all in the running.

"Air China already has consolidated connections with Madrid and Barcelona and, therefore, it is clear and everyone in Spain knows that the third option has to be Andalucía," Bernal added. The Junta is interested in attracting more Chinese tourists as they stay an average of ten days in the region and spend more than 280 euros per person per day.

In relation to the rise in prices in coastal areas this summer, Bernal said: "we have observed that the higher the quality, the higher the price. We are becoming able to attract a different customer and it is also important to value it from this point of view because this type of person is much more sympathetic, more compatible with the local communities. We are beginning to observe perhaps fewer situations of saturation or nuisance on the part of the local residents, because the tourists who visit us are increasingly sensitive and do not come en masse".

Asked about the shift of Spanish tourists travelling to cooler areas of northern Spain instead of the Andalusian coast, especially the Costa del Sol, the minister considered it "hasty" to conclude from the data for July that there is a "trend" occurring. "What we have been observing is the trend that, with the arrival of more international tourists, there has been a rise in prices and that the Spanish tourist is looking for more affordable destinations," Bernal said.

Andalucía welcomed some 1,461,773 international tourists in July, a 8.68% increase compared to the same month last year, with an expenditure of 2.03 billion euros, some 10.3% more, according to Spain's INE national institute of statistics. This is the best figure for international tourist arrivals and the best in terms of expenditure in the month of July in the region since historic records started.

On average, each tourist visiting the region spent 169 euros per day in July, 1.94% more than in the same month of the previous year, and stayed 8.23 days in Andalucía. The average expenditure per person was 1,391 euros, 1.49% more than in July of the previous year. So far this year up to July, 7,733,415 tourists have visited Andalucía (+12.97%) and have spent 10,306.32 million euros in the region (+22.53%).

With regard to the cruise tourism measures being introduced in Rome and Barcelona - in the latter a tax of seven euros has been approved for passengers making a stopover in the city - the Andalusian minister described these as "improvisations" and "populism". "Trying to export the situation in Venice, for example, to Seville, Malaga, Granada and Cordoba, among those usually cited as hyper-saturated cities, seems to me to be irresponsible," Bernal said.