Although people initially anticipated that
Spain will see lesser tourists this April as the Easter holidays fell in March
this year instead of April, the results regarding tourist info in Spain were surprising as per the statistics
published by the central government of Spain, which indicate it to be
otherwise.
In tandem with the number of tourist inflow
from UK, international tourists from other countries to Spain also increased
and the total tourist inflow stood at over 6.1 million, which is a 11.3%
increase when compared to the statistics of the previous year. Every one among
four international tourists who visit Spain is from UK and the number of
tourists from UK also found a steep rise as it rose by 18.3% to 1.4 million.
Tourist inflow from France and Germany also increased, but it did not increase
as much as the tourist inflow from UK did. Tourists from France stood at 1.09
million, which was a 14.4% hike when compared to the previous year and the
total tourists from Germany increased by a mere 2.9%, taking the total to
876,000.
The fourth highest foreign tourists to
Spain were from Scandinavia, with the count being 408,500. Netherlands occupied
the fifth spot this year, pushing Italy below and the increase of tourists from
Netherlands was a whopping 37.4%, which corresponded to 322,000.
The total number of tourists from UK visiting
Spain since the starting of 2016 increased by 19.4%, taking the count to 4.04
million, which attributes to the overall 13% hike in the foreign visitors. In
total, Spain has attracted 18.1 million tourists till April. Tourists of Irish
and Dutch origin have increased significantly this year, and the rise is 25.6%
and 25.5% respectively.
The cumulative total of France and Germany
are the second and third highest, which stands at 2.67 million after a 9.5%
increase in the case of France while the count increased to 2.61 million or
6.7%, in the case of Germany.
Within Spain, the most preferred destination among foreign tourists in April, the month in which there is a
transition from winter to spring, changed from Canary Islands to Catalunya. Nearly
25% of the foreign visitors preferred to visit Catalunya in April and the
second preferred destination was Canaries, which stood at 17.5%, followed by Andalucia
at 16.4%, Balearics at 12.6%, Comunidad Valenciana at 10.5% and Madrid at 9.1%.
The increase in the percentage varied from
2.5% to 17.7% spread across the 17 popular tourist destinations of Spain.
The significance of British tourists to
Spain is clearly evident in the recent bulletin they had published. In most of
the regions, UK was the major supplier of foreign tourists and the British were
also among the second most tourists to other regions. It was only in the case
of Madrid that UK did occupy neither the first nor the second places. However,
this can be justified by the fact that people traveling from different
continents prefer to stay in the capital of the nation they visit rather than
any other place.
