Spain is bucking the trend of not meeting pre-COVID tourism figures, announcing that April’s international tourist arrivals were 1.2 per cent higher than the same month in 2019.
At the start of the peak season this year, Spain recorded 7.2 million international tourists in April with the largest influx coming from the United States.
“The data reflects an extraordinary recovery in tourism… Everything seems to indicate that we are going to break records compared to 2019,” minister for tourism, Spain, Hector Gomez, told reporters in Madrid.
The Spanish government forecasts it will see between 52.3 million and 54.8 million tourists arrive between May and October, again up on the figures reported in the same time period in 2019.
Gomez said Spain’s goal is to attract visitors from distant markets such as China, South Korea, Japan and the United States and has recently held a number of meetings with Asian airlines to increase the number of routes and connectivity to the country.
The tourism sector in Spain made up 12 per cent of the overall economy prior to the pandemic.
Many countries around the world are still struggling to get back to the figures they were used to pre COVID.
For example, Australia, and in particular Sydney has not bounced back, with airport figures highlighting A total of 3,120,000 passengers passed through Sydney Airport in January 2023, representing a 78.8 per cent recovery compared to pre-COVID January 2019.
Domestic passenger traffic totalled 1,887,000 in January 2023; an 82.4 per cent recovery compared to January 2019.
1,233,000 international passengers passed through the airport in January 2023, representing a 73.9 per cent recovery on January 2019 passenger traffic.
