RECORD overseas tourist numbers in Spain are not being reflected in big rises in overnight hotel stays as German bookings have gone down with UK arrivals rising.
As a national average, July’s reservations rose by a modest 1.8% compared to a year earlier with 44.6 million overnight stays, according to the National Statistics Institute(INE).
Domestic bookings went up by 1% while foreign reservations rose by 2.1% but there are no breakdown figures for each of Spain’s 17 regions.
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The German market reported a 7.3% fall last month but UK bookings counter-balanced that with a 7.1% increase compared to a year earlier.
Between January and July, hotel bookings rose by just 0.7%, with a 0.4% fall domestically but a 1.2% rise in foreign guests.
Price rises are being blamed for putting off domestic holidaymakers as well visitors from Germany.
The INE said the average price of a nightly stay last month was up by 4.6% over 12 months- working out at €146.50.
The first seventh months of the year saw average prices go up by 5.2%.
That also has to be taken in tandem with four years of cumulative big prices hikes, namely 12.8% in 2021, 17.1% in 2022, 8.6% in 2023 and 7% in 2024.
With inflation and especially food price rises, tourists have been looking to cut back spending to balance their holiday budgets.
The picture though is very mixed with Germany, Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands recording significant booking reductions, but with increases for the United Kingdom, Ireland, Austria, Poland, and Portugal.
Some areas like Benidorm and the Costa Blanca have also reported impressive occupancy rates this summer.
German visitors recorded 4.33 million overnight hotel stays in Spain last month- down 346,000 on the previous July.
Besides higher hotel bills, there’s speculation that a warm summer back home kept people from travelling to Spain, along with cheaper options available to German customers to countries like Croatia and Turkey.
The biggest national percentage fall was from Denmark with a 15% drop- working out at a reduction of 65,293 overnight stays.
The UK market- the main source of foreign tourists- continued to deliver, accounting for a quarter of all overnight stays.
July’s total of 7.78 million was 7.1% higher with a significant hike over a year of half-a-million stays.
The largest percentage increase was Poland at 29.8% and 1.13 million overnight bookings.
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