For your holidays, are you more likely to choose Costa del Sol in Spain or Tuscany in Italy?
The majority of tourists choose the first option, reveal figures published this Friday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
Spain received a record 85.1 million international tourists last year, 18.7% more than last year.
It confirms the central place occupied on the world tourism map by Spain, the second most popular tourist destination in 2022 behind France - which has not yet published its figures for 2023.
British tourists in force
The British, in particular, love holidays in Spain.
The United Kingdom is thus the leading country of origin for foreign tourists in Spain, with 17.3 million tourists welcomed last year.
They are followed by France (11.8 million), Germany (10.9 million) and the Netherlands (4.9 million).
The most visited regions were Catalonia (21.2 million tourists), ahead of the Balearic Islands (16.9 million), the Canary Islands (16.4 million) and Andalusia (14.3 million).
Additional reason for satisfaction for Spain: spending by foreign tourists increased by 24.7%, reaching a record level of 108.6 billion euros, compared to 91.9 billion in 2019, the last year before the pandemic.
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These figures constitute “an extraordinary starting point to continue working and improving the quality of our tourism industry in 2024,” said the Spanish Minister of Tourism, Jordi Hereu, in a press release.
According to the employers' organization Exceltur, this dynamic should indeed continue this year, with a level of national and international tourism revenue expected at around 200 billion euros.
“If this forecast comes true, tourism will contribute 41.4% to Spanish economic growth,” underlined the employers' organization in mid-January during a press conference.