Spain welcomed a record 60.4 million foreign tourists in 2013, according to estimates released Wednesday by Exceltur, the association of the tourist sector.
Jose Luis Zoreda, vice president of Exceltur said the strong performance of the sector was “due exclusively to foreign demand”, while domestic demand tumbled as about one in four Spaniards was out of job.
Britons, Germans and French made up the biggest groups of visitors in 2013. Spain also benefitted from the crisis in the eastern Mediterranean, he said.
Exceltur emphasized the instability in Egypt, which lost 2.5 million potential tourists in 2013, compared to the three million Spain gained.
Domestic tourism fell last year to a level below that of 2004, although it showed signs of recovery during the fourth quarter.
With regard to 2014, Zoreda announced that tourism will once again be the engine of the country’s economic growth increasing on the order of 1.8 percent “quite a bit above the increase of 0.6 percent that today … analysts estimate for the entire Spanish economy.”
Spain recorded 57.7 million visitors in 2012, coming in as the world’s fourth most popular tourist destination, just after China, data from the World Tourism Organisation showed.
