The final 'sprint' that launched the historical tourism record in Spain: visits grew by 12% after the summer compared to before the covid

2023 was a record year for the tourism sector. Spain welcomed 85.1 million foreign visitors, an unprecedented figure in historical series. Never before have so many international tourists arrived in the country in a single year, which demonstrates not only the recovery of the sector after the pandemic, but also its strength.. The growth in arrivals skyrocketed especially in the final stretch of the year. In summer, Spain received just 0.68% more foreign tourists than in 2019, while in the last three months of the year the volume of travelers increased by 11.96% compared to before the pandemic.. This pull outside of the high season outlines the deseasonalization of the activity that the sector aspires to in order to gain stability and guarantee its sustainability.

According to data published this Friday by the INE, 18.7% more international tourists arrived in Spain in 2023 than in the previous year. The impact of the restrictions imposed by Covid prevented us from exceeding 71.7 million visitors in 2022, so we had to wait another year for the sector to fully recover.. In 2019, 83.5 million arrivals were registered, a record number that has been surpassed in the last year with an increase of 1.85%.

The 85.1 million tourists received in 2023 were concentrated, as usual, in the summer months. 34.13% of foreign visitors chose the months of July, August and September to come to Spain, compared to 27.95% arriving between April and June, 21.78% between October and December and 16.14% % between January and April. The predilection for summer matches the traditional appeal of Spain as a sun and beach destination.

“Historically, tourism in Spain has focused a lot on sun and sand, but institutions and businessmen pursue deseasonalization so that the available resources are exploited beyond the high season,” explains Pablo Díaz, professor of Economics Studies and Company of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). “Many jobs depended on the summer and that created a certain economic unsustainability. We have been working on deseasonalization for a long time, although it is not easy,” adds Diego Santos, tourism expert at EAE Business School.

The tourism boom in 2023 is moving towards this deseasonalization. If the data are observed month by month, at the start of the year the number of arrivals refused to reach pre-pandemic figures. In the first quarter, between January and March, 13.7 million international tourists visited Spain, still 3.52% less than in the same period of 2019.. The surprise of the pre-covid data finally arrived in April, with the stimulus of Holy Week, when 7.2 million foreign tourists visited the Mediterranean country, 1.25% more than in 2019. Growth was repeated in the months of May and July – with increases of 3.78% and 2.62% respectively – although at the end of the summer the records remained very similar to those of the year before the pandemic.

Between July and September, Spain received 29 million tourists last year, 12.93% more than in 2022, but just 0.68% more than in 2019, when it exceeded 28.8 million.. Faced with this timid increase, once the high season was over, the number of visits registered a significant boost after the summer. Between October and December, 18.5 million foreign tourists visited Spain, a figure 11.96% above the 16.5 million travelers welcomed in 2019.. In fact, in the month of December alone, 5.2 million international tourists arrived, which is 20.97% more than before the pandemic, the largest increase comparing month to month.

The potential of national tourism

The final sprint in arrivals is also reflected in hotel occupancy, which in the last two months of 2023 broke records for the months of November and December by filling 52.49% and 49.72% of the beds.. According to the INE hotel occupancy survey, 6.8 million travelers stayed in these establishments in November and 6.6 million in December. More than half of these guests came from within Spain.

“National tourism helps to deseasonalize what international tourism highly seasonalizes,” says Díaz, who points to a change in tourist consumption habits.. “Holidays are no longer concentrated so much in summer, but there are more getaways spread throughout the year,” he adds.. In 2023 as a whole, the number of residents staying in hotels grew by 3.63% compared to 2019

“International tourism is also trying to attract out of season, but it is complicated. We will see if it is not climate change that ends up deseasonalizing it, because British or German tourists prefer to come in spring than in summer,” predicts the UOC professor, who also mentions the new market niche opened by digital nomads to when it comes to attracting foreign tourists outside of the high season.

Diversify to grow

In any case, the deseasonalization of tourism involves diversifying the offer. “Some destinations, by their very nature, have more attraction factors than the sun and beach, with initiatives such as large events, concerts…”, says Santos. “At the country level, the offer has been greatly diversified for years. In fact, marketing has not been done with sun and beach for a long time, we are going to more cultural, gastronomic, business tourism issues…”, he points out, at the same time that he exemplifies the attractiveness of big cities for their varied offer.. “In general, all destinations are aware of the importance of carrying out strategies to depend less on the summer season. “You have to take into account the situation and what can be offered,” he adds.

“On an economic level, the sustainability of the sector involves deseasonalization and at a social level as well, because overcrowding at specific times generates quite a few problems.. The ideal would be to never have very high volumes of tourists, but to always have harmonious numbers,” says the EAE Business School professor. “If we continue to concentrate tourism growth seasonally and geographically, the tensions will multiply.. De-seasonalization is at the same time that geographic diversification is necessary”, agrees Díaz.