Nearly eight million international passengers arrived in Spain during October, marking a 95 per cent recovery of tourist arrivals marked in the same month in 2019.
The Spanish Ministry of Tourism data also revealed that two regions, the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, received 6.2 per cent more passengers this October than in the same period of 2019, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
“An intensification of the recovery, after a few summer months in which the recovery percentage has remained around 87 per cent of the thresholds of 2019. This improvement could be due to an extension of the summer season, which would mean that we are advancing in the objective of seasonally adjusting tourist flows to have a more sustainable and higher quality model,” the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Reyes Maroto pointed out in this regard.
According to the data from the Ministry, the six main source markets for Spain that presented the highest figures last month compared to those of 2019 are as follows:
Denmark – 166,020 travellers, with an increase of 16.5 per cent
Portugal – (262,446) by 4.9 per cent
France – (677,210) by 4.2 per cent
Ireland – (215,948) by 4.2 per cent
Switzerland – (303,355) by 2.3 per cent
Italy – (687,607) by 1.6 per cent
In addition, as the first market of passengers with a figure of 1,824,971, the United Kingdom represented 23 per cent of the total share, followed by Germany with 1,212,787 passengers, which also marked 15 per cent of the share.
During October, most British passengers visited the Canary Islands, while the Germans mainly went to the Balearic Islands.
As a result, the two island regions exceeded the records before the pandemic and increased respectively by 6.2 per cent compared to the same month in 2019. Thus, the Balearic Islands received a total of 1,384,404 passengers, and the Canary Islands a total of 1,192,202.
Moreover, the Community of Madrid also registered 1,721,169 passengers, mainly from France. The list follows Catalonia, with 1,601,983 travellers, most of whom are French, Italian and Dutch. At the same time, 972,244 travellers arrived in Andalusia and 843,682 in the Community of Valencia.
Of the total number of passengers arriving in Spain, six out of ten flew with a low-cost airline, compared to four out of ten who chose a traditional airline