The President of the Spanish Federation of Travel Agencies (CEAV), Rafael Gallego, in a statement to Europa Press this week said that the tourism forecast for this summer, after one week into the season, is “pretty good”, with the number of domestic and international tourists in Spain expected to increase by an average of between 4% and 5%, placing the figures at around the same levels of 2012, which was registered as one of the top three years in the history of Spanish tourism, in terms of numbers of visitors and spending.
These favourable predictions are mainly due to the expected increase in foreign tourist arrivals and because the domestic market “has livened up” at the last minute, said Gallego, who highlighted the “significant increase” in national tourists to holiday resorts in Spain.
Nine out of ten Spanish spend their holidays in destinations within the country, mostly on the coasts, and a “significant number” will continue to holiday on cruise ships with departures from the major Spanish ports such as Malaga, Valencia and Barcelona.
Europe will again be the favourite continent for the Spanish, who will travel on direct flights to cities in Italy, to Berlin (which is in “high demand”), central Europe and London. Travel to the United States is also gaining in popularity.
Other locations attracting Spanish tourists during the summer season are in Asia, especially India, Thailand and China, and in recent years destinations such as Vietnam and Cambodia have also increased their number of reservations from Spain.
Against this backdrop, if the “current stability” is maintained, Spain will close the year with an “economic upturn” that could put 2013 among the three best years ever in terms of tourist arrivals, after the record of over 57 million registered last year.
In terms of revenue, the CEAV President said he expected Spain to surpass “by far” the Bank of Spain data recorded for 2012, of around 43.3 million euros of tourism revenue.
The Minister of Industry, Energy and Tourism, Jose Manuel Soria, predicted “a good year” in terms of tourism, and confirmed that the current figures for holiday bookings for the period between June and October this year have registered an increase of 7.8% over the same period in 2012.
Up until May, Spain received more than 19.8 million international tourists, representing an increase of 3.9%, while spending reached 18,433 million euros in the same period, which is an increase of 7.9% compared to the first five months of 2012.
