International Tourism Statistics for Andalucia

International Tourist Statistics for Andalucia

by Chris Chaplow

Foreign Tourists or International Tourism

In 2019 Andalucia received 12.1 million international tourists. 3.4% up on 2018 inline with consistent growth from 2010 to 2019.  International tourists to Andalucia are defined as those making an overnight stay, their country of residence is not Spain and their main visit in Spain is to Andalucia.

These figures would place Andalucia (if a country) about 25th in a world league of foreign tourist arrivals.

In 2020 Andalucia received onlt 2.7 million international tourists. January and February were up about 3% on 2019 but after mid-March when the Coronavirus pandemic.struck the borders were closed until mid-July when restrictions and/or tests made it complicated for international tourists to visit.

In 2021 Andalucia received 4.2 million international tourists, about a third of pre pandemic levels. In the second half of the year as resrictions eased and international tourist numbers inceased with October / Novemeber reaching about 75% of 2019 levels. (See monthly table below). However the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus at the end of the year reduced reservations for the 2022 holiday season in the New Year. 

The national tourist arrivals (including Andalucian tourists) increased substantially in 2021 with close to 20 million tourists helping the economy of the tourism and especially the hotel sector. Of the 20 million 77% were national and about half of the national are Andalucian residents travelling within Andalucia helping the local destination economy but not the Andalucian economy. At FITUR (January 2022) (Hosteltur)  Juan Marin, the Andalucia Tourism minister announced  that the estimate for 2022 was 26 million tourists (ie 80% of 2019 levels) and 2023 would see the return to pre-pandemic 2019 levels of 32.5 million. On 9th August Arturo Bernal, the new Andalucian tourism minister in a Cadena SER radio interview revised the 2022 estimate up to 30m and again to almost 31m in a 23rd December Cadena SER interview.

International hopes for 2022

Internationally 2022 started slowly, the Omicron wave over New Year held back summer reservations. January 2022 saw 56% International arrivals compared to 2019 levels, but UK arrivals were only back to 39%.  Many reports still claimed 2022 will be a bumper summer for travel to Spain.    

Andalucia is dependent on airplane seat availability for most of its international tourism.  Given that most flights are nearly full thanks to price yield management, international tourism numbers can be estimated  as soon as the airline schedules are published. AENA and the tourist boards do this analysis. Andalucia announced at the ‘Fly Andalucia Summit’ in October 2021 that routes would be almost back to 2019 levels in 2022. This was repeated at the WTM in London in November with respect to UK routes. However routes is not the same as flights nor seats. Mapping by Andalucia.com noted post a pandemic increase in routes with less frequency in flights.

At the end of March AENA (as reported Dario Sur ) had calculated seats from the summer season (27-March to 29 Oct 2022) schedules. "Airlines are currently offering 16.2 million seats to (and from)  Malaga from different destinations and this is 3.6% more than 2019" (schedule prediction). Actual figures for April to October 2022 were 14.1m passenger movements, ie 90% of the 2022 schedules calculation; presumably due to cancelled flights and unsold seats. Naturally this did not forsee the wave of airport  capacity chaos that errupted after the summer timetable was implemented in April, nor the strikes and other airline cancelations and off-putting baggage chaos in the summer of 2022.

It looks like International tourism still has a long way to recover, and even more so from the UK. Francis Salado head of the Costa del Sol Tourist Board ( Dario Sur and El Español ) seems to recognise this judging by their 2022 strategy to focus on France, Germany, Belgium and Demark and "We are going to focus attention on the national market, as well as undertake an ofensive without precidence to avoid excessive dependency on the UK market".

However at a Hispano-British forum in Malaga on 30th September 2022 he announced a policy U-turn. "It is clear that British tourists are still suporting the Costa del Sol destination, although the 2019 figures have not yet recovered." Faced with this situation, the head of the Costa del Sol tourist board announced that various campaigns will be undertaken in the British market, some of them to capture the so-called 'energy nomads' from the UK in order to recover a market that is "enormously loyal to our destination". ( Dario Sur).

• When will Andalucia’s international tourism return to pre-pandemic normality?
• Airport Statistics for Andalucia

International Tourists in Andalucia - by year

In the table we observe the increase in international (ie non Spanish) tourist arrivals in Andalucia from the year 2000 to 2007, the fall to 2010 followed by the rise to 2019, the pandamic in 2020/1 and the begining of the recovery in 2022.

Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadistica. Movimentos turisticas en frontera. Frontur
* Andalucia.com estimate based on actual statistics to date and 85% of 2019 to end of year.

International Tourists to Andalucia - by month

Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadistica. Movimentos turisticas en frontera. Frontur data
Data for November expected to be published in early Feb 2023.
* Andalucia.com estimate based on actual statistics to date and 85% of 2019 to end of year.

Tourist visits to towns in Andalucia

Tourist visits to towns in Andalucia are measuread by INE from hotel occupation records. They don't reflect when a town receives day trip visits only overnight stays. A tourist staying serveral nights is counted once however a tourist changing hotel will be counted twice.

Source: Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadistica.

 Interesting Facts

Historically the total international tourist spend is an average holiday spend per tourist of  1,067 euro and with an average stay of 11 nights this is an average daily spend of 97 euro. 

This holiday spending is generally broken down into about 20% on transport, 25% on accommodation, 15% in a package holiday, 15% in restaurants or food and 20% in excursions.

Those staying in hotels averaged 8 nights whilst those not in hotels averaged 16 nights. The principal arrival was via an airport at 80% and by road 8%.

A minority of foreign tourists now arrive as part of a package holiday as 80% travel independently.

There is very much a high season as  3.2 million or 37%  arrive in July, August or September.    

Main reason for coming to Andalucia according to a survey are:

• Climate 26%
• Beach 15%
• Cultural 17%
• Monuments 11%
• Visit Family 8%
• Price 5%
• Nature 5%
• Golf 3%
• Ski 1%
• Other reasons 10%