The economic woes affecting Germany and the cost of living crisis hitting the UK have seemingly impacted the Spanish tourism market – except for one destination.
Britons and Germans have historically been loyal to Spain when it comes to holidays. But overall figures for tourists coming from the UK and Germany show the country has failed to attract the same number of holidaymakers from these two nations it was welcoming in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic prompted a slump in the holiday market.
The analysis of the overall Spanish tourism sector including data up to November 2023 shows the number of German and British tourists was four percent lower than in 2019 – a shortfall equal to 1.2 million tourists.
This dip affected almost the whole of Spain, with the Balearic Islands remaining unscathed.
Bucking the trend, this archipelago surpassed its pre-pandemic tourist level and experienced last year a one percent rise – amounting to some 90,000 people – from 2019 in arrivals from Germany and the UK.
Up to November 2023, a total of 8.2 million Britons and Germans travelled to the Balearic Islands, an eight percent increase from 2022.
Álvaro Blanco, Counsellor at the Spanish Embassy in Berlin, commented on the success by telling Spanish publication Ultima Hora: “The degree of loyalty is huge and the offer is getting better and better.”
The enduring loyalty of Brits and Germans and improved offerings by the islands proved to be key to this success, he added.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Brits feeling the pinch of the cost of living crisis have either chosen to vacation in the UK or choose cheaper holiday destinations such as Turkey and Egypt.
A survey carried out between September 14 and 15, 2023 on 2,000 British adults by digital pollsters Find Out Now and commissioned by the interior design business InteriorNet showed that nearly 40 percent of those polled had last year abandoned their foreign holiday plans to save money.
The more recent data regarding the Balearics, however, suggest that many of those who did travel headed to this archipelago.
In the midst of an 18 percent slump in German travel, the Balearic Islands welcomed 4.5 million tourists from Germany last year – marking nearly half of the total 10.2 million German arrivals to Spain.
Signalling the positive trend is to continue throughout this year, tour operator TUI has planned a season in which it will bring more than two million travellers to the archipelago, the highest figure in the nearly 60 years of the company’s relationship with the Balearic Islands.
In 2023, these islands didn’t just outperform previous records when it comes to German and British tourists, but also saw a noteworthy increase in arrivals from other countries – including a 25 percent rise from 2022 in American tourists and a 19 percent in Swiss holidaymakers.
