British tourists flood the streets of Benidorm. More than 50% of the travelers staying in hotel establishments in the Alicante town already come from United Kingdom. The effect of brexit It is thus left behind and they already account for 50.3% of the total number of visitors, 3% more overnight stays than before the pandemic.
In the second half of May (from 16 to 31), Benidorm registered a 81.6% occupancyaccording to data from the hotel management Hosbec. This is an improvement of six tenths compared to the previous fortnight, although they are significantly lower than those of the same period of 2019.
Overall, the month of May has closed with just a 1.9% difference compared to the same year prior to the pandemic. The hotel management association highlights that the city’s occupancy rate has fallen by two points due to bad weather -with widespread showers and thunderstorms– which punished above all the product of Sun and beach. This decrease -they point out- has been concentrated in national tourism, which is the one that can cancel reservations more easily.
“The British grow 3% without a trace of Brexit,” they highlight from Hosbec. “The United Kingdom returns to its numbers without Brexit or the economic crisis affecting its visits to our destinations and airports,” they add. Both Alicante and Valencia airports “set absolute passenger records every month.”
Spanish tourists represented 35.5% of the total in May, while the employers’ association data shows that 64.5% of the occupation is made up of international travelers. Far from the British stand out the Belgians (3,2%), dutch (2,8%), Irish (2,8%) y Portuguese (1.2%). No other country of origin manages to pass the 1% threshold.
The president of Hosbec, Fede Fuster, is optimistic about the data and considers that hotel occupancy in June will be at these values similar to or even higher than in the pre-pandemic stage“in view of the good forecasts, the considerable improvement in the weather and the rebound in bookings for the weekends.”
According to hoteliers, for the first half of June there is already a reservation forecast of 80.7%, something that they hope to be able to surpass thanks to last-minute reservations. “Right now our goals are not to break records, but to consolidate markets and demand, to recover a profitability that allows to rinse part of the losses of the years of Covid and its consequences, and guarantee a tourist activity within a framework of environmental, economic and social sustainability”, says Fuster.
Optimism of the sector for summer
At a general level, tourism in Spain is on the rise after the worst of the pandemic. More and more foreign markets are recovering and the sector’s expectations for a summer marked by elections are generally good. Spain received the visit of 7.2 million international tourists in April, 18.5% more than in the same period of 2022 and 1.2% more than in April 2019. These are figures that represent a historical record in number of visitors and volume of spending.
According to the latest data from the Statistics National Institute (INE), overnight stays in Spanish hotel establishments increased by 20.9% in the first four months of the year, exceeding those registered in the same period in 2019. In terms of arrivals, in that same period, Spain has received almost 21 million, which represents a growth of 32.4% compared to last year.
British y germans concentrate most of the overnight stays despite the rise in prices and the effect of the inflation. Travelers from the United Kingdom accounted for 22.1% of overnight stays in April and Germans, 18.3% of all non-residents. Next are tourists from France, the Netherlands and the United States, which account for 10%, 4.7% and 4.6% of the total, respectively.
In numbers, those of the United Kingdom were the main source market for tourists in April, with 1.4 million visitors, 8.7% more than in the same month of 2022. The figures for Benidorm also give a sample of the recovery who experiences fate. The April data from the INE speaks of an average occupancy of 59.8% of the beds offered in Spanish hotels.
Recovery extends to all provinces
Apart from that, the hotel management ensures that Valencia continues to be consolidated as the most demanded destination, with a combination of urban, business, sun and beach vacation, and cultural destination that “positions it as one of the tourist spots with the highest occupancy hotel in Spain. Its data reflect that May has closed close to 90% average occupancy.
The good indicators also extend to the other capitals and provinces. Alicante registers an 88% average occupancy, while the Costa Blanca and Castellón range between 73% and 70%, respectively. Other smaller tourist destinations are also performing well. According to the statistical analysis of the hoteliers, Alfalfa del Pi grows almost 10 points to exceed 73% in this second fortnight, Calpe raise three points to 75% and Gandiatwo points to 73%.+
2023-06-05 20:52:01
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