Marbella expecting a record summer
The Costa del Sol is expecting to increase its summer trade by 12% this year, roughly the same percentage increase seen during the winter of 2015/16.
Tourism Costa del Sol president, Elias Bendodo, said in a press conference that he expects “a historically high season following the magnificent results of last winter.”
Malaga-Costa del Sol Airport
Between November 2015 and March 2016 many tourism indicators hit new highs. For example, Malaga-Costa del Sol airport, saw over two million passengers arrive in what is commonly known as the coasts “off-season”, marking a new record for off-season passenger numbers in the airports history. The numbers represented an increase of 14.8% (270,000 arrivals) when compared to the same period last year.
The number of domestic travellers landing at Malaga airport increased 16.4%, while the number of international arrivals increased 14.5%. Among the increases were significant jumps in traffic from Poland (51.8% more), Sweden (23% more) and travellers from Russia increased 23.5%.
Hotels and Overnight Stays
In terms of the number of travellers staying in hotels, the off-season saw more than 1.3 million recorded stays, an increase of 11.7% over the previous winter. Growth in this sector was recorded in both international and domestic travellers.
With regard to overnight stays, over 4.7 million were recorded. This represents an increase of 12.3% over the same period last year when a little over 3 million overnight stays were counted. Much of this increase can be attributed to foreign tourism, which increased by 17.6%.
Overall, overnight stays in Spain (hotels, apartments, campsites, rural accommodation) between November 2015 and March 2016, exceeded 1.7 million, an increase of 14.9%. Once again, this increase was seen evenly spread between domestic and foreign travellers.
Amongst the tourist markets which saw significant increases in the number of overnight stays were Ireland and Poland which saw increases of 53.8% and 52%, respectively. Other nationalities with increases worthy of a mention were the Danes who recorded 43.7% more overnight stays than in the previous year. Other markets including France, Norway and the UK all saw growth of between 20 and 30% from the 2014 to the 2015 off-season.
