Alex Trelinski
ALICANTE has overhauled Barcelona in the number of people staying in tourist apartments during 2022.
A University of Zaragoza study shows there were 155,726 stays in Alicante last year, compared to 145,501 in the Catalan capital.
It’s an impressive turn round for Alicante which lies seventh nationally for holiday rentals, with Madrid and Benidorm continuing to dominate reservations.
Before the Covid pandemic in 2019, Barcelona recorded 230,436 apartment bookings with Alicante well behind on just 88,723.
Alicante was over 3,000 stays behind Granada’s total for 2022, with Madrid, Benidorm, Sevilla, and Malaga the top five locations.
Visitors have also chosen to spend more time in Alicante with the number of registered overnight stays doubling the 2021 total, when the pandemic and travel restrictions were still very much in play.
Last year 577,017 nights were accumulated in Alicante tourist apartments compared to 231,409 the previous year- a 149% increase.
Therefore for numbers of nights, Alicante leap-frogged Granada, with Benidorm leading(2.4 mil), Madrid (2.1 mil), Sevilla (1.1 mil), Valencia (886,938) and Malaga (649,345).
READ MORE:
- Spain’s foreign tourist revival continues with bigger spending than in 2019
- Madrid tops ranking of most competitive tourist cities
- Spain had more foreign tourists in January than three years earlier- just before Covid pandemic
