Spain makes up for the disappearance of Russian tourism and the fall of British and German tourism with Portuguese, Americans or Italians

The high holiday season has once again brought great news for tourism three years after the pandemic forced the main engine of the Spanish economy to operate at half throttle. With the summer break over, business owners—many of them small businesses for whom the summer vacation is vital—do the math again and the results are good.. In general terms, tourists who left due to the pandemic have returned. Arrivals practically equaled those registered in the summer of 2019 and total spending, catapulted by inflation, has been a record.

However, although Spain has recovered foreign tourism lost in these pandemic years, those who arrive now are not the same as those who came four years ago.. The war in Ukraine has wiped out the half million Russian tourists who visited Spain in the summer before the pandemic.. Furthermore, the economic crisis that arose as a result of the invasion has emptied the pockets of two of the main markets for Spain: the British and the German.

The figures are eloquent. In June, July and August 2019, Spain received 542,000 Russian visitors. Four years later, there are none left due to the visa restriction for these citizens after the invasion of Ukraine. This has been especially noticeable on the Mediterranean coast, but especially in Catalonia, where 60% of the Russian tourists who visited the country in the summer of 2019 stayed.

397,000 Britons who did in 2019 and 226,000 Germans have also not appeared. In this case, the economic crisis that is sweeping the Old Continent as a result of the war is to blame.. High inflation and economic stagnation in the United Kingdom and Germany have caused many of these tourists to stay home. A factor to which we must also add the effects of Brexit in the case of the United Kingdom.

“The fall in the British and German markets can be dangerous if it continues. We will have to see if we are going to be able to find other markets to replace these two and how the economic situation evolves,” Tolo Deyà, vice dean at the Faculty of Tourism of the University of the Balearic Islands, explains to 20minutos.. However, Deyà points out that the season has been very good in general for Spain. “We have met expectations even at the risk of having raised prices a lot,” he adds.

However, the British and German markets continue to be two of the main sources of income for the sector in high season.. Tourists of these nationalities spent 11,631 million euros this summer, an amount that represents 31% of all the expenditure made by foreign visitors in those months.

Beyond the British and Germans, there are also 250,000 Asian tourists (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) and another 200,000 from the Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway) missing.. In total, there are almost 1.8 million tourists from different nationalities who have not appeared this summer for their usual appointment with Spain.

Portugal, the US or Italy, to the rescue

However, the sector has managed to make up for all these absences with more than 1.5 million additional tourists of other nationalities.. The increase in Portuguese tourism is striking, with 189,000 more visitors than four years ago. In this case it is a local visitor, who travels by car and with a certain purchasing power, says Deyà.

The boom in arrivals of Americans also stands out, 172,000 more than four years ago. In this case, the role played by celebrities or Spanish fiction products that have become popular outside the borders thanks to streaming platforms have contributed to boosting tourism from this country, reflects Deyà.

But it doesn't end there. 164,000 more Italian tourists have also arrived than four years ago and even from more exotic destinations. The arrival of Mexicans has increased by 121,000 people, that of Israelis has increased by 112,000 and that of Canadians has increased by 74,000 people.. The markets to which Spanish tourism has access are increasingly diverse and this is healthy.

“There is a diversification that is positive, very positive. As in any company, diversification is key to reducing risk and tourism is a sector with a lot of risk,” says Deyà.. And the pandemic has accentuated a trend that dates back years. In 2016, 38.3% of foreign tourists who visited Spain in the summer months were British or German. In 2023 the percentage had reduced to 33.2%.

Tour package trips continue to lose ground

Another of the striking data left by the end of the high season is the confirmation that tourist packages continue to lose ground compared to direct contracting. Travel through this modality, in which accommodation, transportation and other expenses are contracted through an agency that organizes the trip, has decreased by 14% compared to 2019. Spain received 635,197 fewer British, German and French people this summer through this modality than it served in 2019.

This trend seems inevitable in a context in which digital platforms make it possible to organize trips with increasing ease and at a lower price than many classic tour operators. “There is no solution, the proliferation of low-cost airlines has energized a more flexible model. There is also a very important factor, which is vacation rentals, which have grown more than exponentially,” concludes Deyà.