Four million international tourists reached Spain in March, with 18.3 per cent or 826,399 of those being British nationals, the Spanish Statistics Institute has revealed.
According to the authority, these figures were close to pre-pandemic levels by 71 per cent, with the average expenditure standing at €1,257, up from €1,068 recorded in March of 2019.
This is particularly good news, considering the fact that Spain is keeping its COVID-19 related restrictions in place, while other countries in the EU like Bulgaria, Greece, Sweden and Lithuania have facilitated their entry rules.
“The excellent employment figures that we have seen in April, and specifically in the hotel and catering sector due to the extraordinary Easter Week, together with the recovery of pre-pandemic levels in scheduled air capacity on international flights, which exceeds 29 million seats for the April-June quarter, are results that make us optimistic,” the Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, said, pointing out the recovery of tourism noticed on a monthly basis.
As per the first quarter of 2022, the number of tourists in Spain had surged by 696.7 per cent, peaking at almost 9.1 million tourists – evidently higher than in 2019 when 1.2 million arrivals were recorded while the total expenditure of international tourists surged by 794.5 per cent, reaching a total of €11.3 million.
The best tourism market sources for the first three months of 2022, after Britons, were German and French tourists, with the latter showing a surge of 332 per cent in tourists, reaching a total of 456,592 tourists. In addition, the German tourism market increased by 483 per cent, peaking at 608,803 more tourists recorded than in the corresponding time last year.
During the first three months of the year, a surge in tourists from Ireland, being up by 2,593.7 per cent from last year’s rates, was noticed. Moreover, tourists from the United States increased by 1,976.5 per cent and the Nordic countries, including tourists from Norway, Sweden and Finland, were up by 1,292.8 per cent.
