Spain continues to be popular with tourists
Spain continues to attract record numbers of tourists as the country begins to see signs of summer.
Spain received over 6 million tourists in April, representing an increase of 11.3% over the same month in 2015, according to the latest data released by the National Institute of Statistics.
As usual, UK travellers accounted for the majority of those visitors with 1.4 million Brits, 23.1% of the total, choosing Spain for their April getaway. This represented an increase over April 2015 of 18.3%.
Tourists from France and Germany also contributed largely to the figures with just over 1 million French and 876,000 Germans visiting Spain during April. The number of French travellers increased 14.4% over the same period last year while the number of German visitors was up 2.9% on the annual rate.
Other countries that realised a large increase in numbers include the Netherlands who saw a 37.4% increase in the number visiting Spain in April. Travellers from the USA increased 22.1%, while the Irish saw an increase of 9.6%.
Cumulatively
Over the two months of March and April 2016, the cumulative number of visitors to Spain reached almost 11 million, representing an increase of 13.4% over the same two-month period in the previous year.
When looking at the first four months of the year, the number reaches a record 18.1 million tourists. This is of course being partly fed by security concerns in other once popular European destinations with many people choosing Spain over Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia and Greece.
In terms of country of origin, for the first four months of the year, the UK accounts for the majority of visitors with over four million visiting, an increase of 19.4% over the same four-month period in 2015.
The number of French visitors also increased across the first four months to 2.6 million visitors, an increase of 9.5%, while German travellers also amounted to 2.6 million visitors, an increase of 6.7%.
Destinations
By autonomous regions, Catalonia was the most popular destination for tourists in April, receiving over 1.4 million visitors, an increase of 2.5% over April 2015. However, when looking at the nationalities of those visitors, the French accounted for the majority with 31.8% of visitors, while British travellers accounted for 10.7%.
The number of people visiting the Canary Islands increased by 16.3% in April, approaching 1.1 million visitors. Of those, 38.3% came from the UK while 20.3% were German travellers.
The third most popular destination in April was Andalusia with almost a million visitors hitting the sunshine coast, representing annual growth of 17.7%. The UK provided the majority of those visitors with 27.7% of the total, while France provided 13.8% of visitors to the region.
Other communities to see an increase were Madrid with 15.7% more visitors, Valencia which saw an increase of 14.8% and the Balearic Islands which received almost 10% more than in April 2015.
Cumulatively for the first four months of the year, the Canary Islands have seen the most tourists with over 4.5 million arriving so far this year. This represents annual growth of 10.7%.
Summer 2016
This year is going to be a busy one for Spain, as well as Portugal. With security concerns in other European countries, ABTA say they have seen a surge in demand for destinations in Western Europe. The Independent also ran an article about this last week.
If you are planning to visit Spain for your summer vacation be prepared for busy beaches, hotels, restaurants and roads. Spain is pretty well prepared for it as a lot of the country depends on tourism and has based much of it’s infrastructure around the industry but still, it can get a bit heated in the mid-day sun. Bring your suncream and relax!
