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Edurne Martínez
Madrid
Monday, 19 August 2024, 12:54
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Spring was a boom period for Spain's city-centre hotels, with Madrid leading the sector with sales growth of up to 18% compared to the second quarter of 2023. The tour regions of Andalucía, Valencia and the Basque Country also recorded a notable boost in their respective cities thanks to the strong pull of foreign visitor demand.
This is mainly due to the increase in arrivals of American tourists, both from the USA and Latin America, a type of traveller who is looking for a more city-centre, urban tourism, higher category hotels and longer stays than most Europeans.
The latest data from Exceltur (an association of 30 plus of Spain's biggest names from all sectors of the tourism industry) revealed a growing disparity between tourist destinations in Spain when it comes to long-haul foreign travellers. These visitors demand a strong cultural content and that benefits city destinations more. Revenue per available room (RevPar) increased by 12% in the second quarter in this type of destination compared to 8% growth in the usual sun-sand-and-sea destinations.
The cities of Bilbao, Alicante and Madrid in particular stand out. In the first case, revenues increased by 27.3% compared to last year, making Bilbao the city with the highest growth. Alicante increased its RevPar by 25% and Madrid by 20%. The developments in other regional and provincial capitals such as Seville, Cordoba and Santiago was also very positive, all with a 15% increase in revenue compared to 2023.
272 euros
This is the average daily expenditure per US traveller in Spain, double that of the British and French visitors.
So, these destinations have grown due to the arrival of more long-haul tourists. Frontur data from the INE (Spain's national institute of statistics) show that last spring Spain welcomed 1.1 million tourists from the USA, 27% of whom visited Madrid. The average daily expenditure at destination (excluding transport) of these visitors between January and March - according to INE data - was 272 euros per person, second only to Asian travellers (304) and double the expenditure in Spain of the British (134 euros/day), French (131) and Germans (124).
The second largest group of long-distance tourists visiting Spain came from Mexico, with 257,000 visiting between March and April. The vast majority (62%) stay in Madrid and their average daily expenditure is also very high at 263 euros. From Argentina 170,000 tourists came in those two months, half of them to Madrid. From Colombia 168,000 arrived, according to Exceltur's estimates, and from Chile almost 50,000.
These are the arrivals officially recorded to date, but we still need the numbers for summer and the travel companies' estimates for this summer are equally striking. Turespaña's air capacity survey for August indicates that the expected number of seats on international flights for August 2024 (86% of all flights landing in Spain come from abroad) will total 12.6 million, 10% more than the 11.4 million seats offered last summer.
Traditional markets such as the UK and Germany continue to rise with increases of close to 8%, but the increase is greater for tourists from the USA, with 12% more seats planned than in August 2023, up to 316,000 in just one month. Among the Latin American markets, Mexico stands out with 10% more scheduled capacity than last summer (up to 114,000 people).
But beyond the American continent, the forecast of seats for travellers from Eastern Europe is also significant, in particular from Poland and the Czech Republic, two countries where the number of tourists travelling to Spain is increasing considerably.
Data from Turespaña reveal that there are more than 278,000 seats planned on flights from Poland this August, and another 115,000 from the Czech Republic, which will be 41% and 30% more seats respectively than the number of passengers who came a year ago. There are two main reasons for this, according to the travel experts: the strong economic performance of these countries, with GDP per capita rising sharply - especially in Poland - over the last ten years, and the suspension of travel to Russia from these countries from 2022 due to the war in Ukraine.
The INE indicates that in the first quarter of 2024 the Polish market grew a lot compared to 2023, both in terms of tourist flow (42% more) and expenditure (24% more).
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