Costa del Sol hotels report holiday booking slowdown in summer

Hotel bookings along the Costa del Sol are starting to slow, signalling the end of the busy summer period, data shows.

Bookings started to slow in July, while hotels recorded a drop in August, the first decline in tourists for this year, according to figures from a Turismo Costa del Sol tourism board report based on data from Spain's national statistics institute (INE).

In addition to a notable drop in Spanish tourists, last month saw the first decrease in visitors and overnight stays from international markets.

While up to June the statistics showed significant growth compared to the same period last year, in July hotels registered almost 6% fewer tourists and 3% fewer stays due to a drop in Spanish tourists, who reduced their bookings by 10%.

However, strong foreign tourism, with 1.3% more overnight stays, moderated this fall, according to the data. This was not the case in August, when hotels received 696,240 tourists, 3.3% less than in the same period last year, due to a 7.2% drop in domestic tourists and a 0.3% drop in international arrivals.

As a result, Costa del Sol hotels have not managed to match last year's results, with 2,766,195 overnight hotel stays, 1.4% less due to a 2.5% drop in domestic bookings, paired with a slight decrease of 0.8% in international bookings.

Despite this, the tourism boom of the first half of the year has allowed hotels in Malaga province to register 4.8% more overnight stays than the same period last year, according to the statistics.

Experts pointed out an increase in prices as one of the causes of this first slowdown in visitors and hotel stays. The average cost of a hotel room in Malaga province stood at 188 euros in August, which rose to 191 in hotels on the coast. This is a 4.1% and 3.7% increase compared to August 2023. The average price for a hotel room in Andalucía and Spain was 157 and 146 euros, respectively, last month.

While the country's main coastal provinces continue on the path of growth, only Malaga and Cadiz recorded a negative balance in August. Despite this, hotel stays in Andalucía have remained practically unchanged, with a slight upturn of 0.2% in August to a total of 7,439,812 overnight stays.

This minimal increase has allowed the region to put together 41 months of growth and achieve the second best figure for overnight stays in a month of August since records started.

Nationally, overnight stays in hotels grew by 2.6% last August, exceeding 47.8 million, an all-time high. In this case, the 4.9% growth in international tourism helped to cushion the 1.3% drop in Spanish visitors.