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ARCHIVED - 18 million British visitors spent 2 million euros per hour in Spain in 2019!
19.5 per cent of all international tourist spending in this country was by visitors from the UK
The Spanish government’s central statistics unit published its data for international tourism for the month of December on Monday, confirming comments made by the Minister for Tourism during the recent Fitur fair in Madrid and reporting that the number of visitors from abroad fell by 0.9 per cent in comparison with December 2018 to 4.31 million and that in the whole of 2019 the figure increased by just 1.1 per cent to 83.7 million.
At the same time, the amount spent by those visitors while in this country rose by 0.1 per cent in December and by 2.8 per cent during the whole year, reaching a new record of 92,278 million euros, and within both annual totals visitors from the UK accounted for by far the largest share attributed to any single market.
In terms of visitor numbers, the December decrease reflected falls of 7.7 per cent and 7.4 per cent in the figures related to tourists arriving from the UK and Germany, which contributed 790,500 and 497,200 respectively. The second largest market was France, with an increase of just 0.5 per cent and a total of 557,000, while the number of Scandinavians visiting Spain during the month was 2.2 per cent lower than in December 2018 at 366,000.
In the whole of the year, 21.6 per cent of all foreign visitors came from the UK (18.1 million), with the next highest proportions belonging to Germany, France (13.3 per cent each) and Scandinavia (6.6 per cent), and while the figures for both the UK and Germany were lower than in 2018 (by 2.4 per cent and 2.1 per cent respectively) the most significant increase was in the number of people arriving from the USA (up by 12.6 per cent to 3.33 million).
It is also interesting to note that during 2019 the figures for the five main coastal tourist regions of Spain were more or less stable, the most significant variations being a fall of 4.4 per cent in the Canaries (possibly due to the collapse of Thomas Cook) and a rise of 3.9 per cent in the Comunidad Valenciana, but there was an increase of 7 per cent in Madrid. The category which comprises the 11 “other regions” saw a rise of 3.1 per cent, although these secondary destinations, which include the Region of Murcia, still account for only 9.8 per cent of the overall total.
But the importance of these figures is not limited to the prestige of being such a popular holiday destination: it lies mainly in the economic activity and employment that international tourism generates in a country where the sector contributes over 11 per cent of GDP. For this reason, the news that spending rose by 2.8 per cent to over 90 billion euros despite the drop in the number of visitors from abroad will be welcomed.
Once again, it is worth stressing the importance of the UK in this respect: British visitors accounted for 19.5 per cent of that spending (almost 18 billion euros, 0.2 per cent more than in 2018), significantly higher than the proportions accounted for by Germany (12.7 per cent), France (8.2 per cent) and Scandinavia (7.35 per cent). To bring these astronomical figures down to a more easily grasped level, that equates to visitors from the UK spending 2.05 MILLION EUROS PER HOUR throughout the year in Spain!
At the same time, the average spending per British visitor rose by 2.7 per cent to 995 euros and the average per day was up by 6.3 per cent to 135 euros, seemingly confounding expectations that the lower value of the pound could reduce spending power.
In this context it is not hard to understand that tourism is one of the many sectors in which there are serious concerns over the possible effects of Brexit during 2020 and 2021, the worry being that any further devaluation of the pound against the euro, or any restrictions imposed on travel between the UK and the EU, could deter visitors from travelling to this country and have a serious impact on the economy not only of the main tourist regions but also of Spain as a whole.
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