In the first nine months of the year the Balearics attracted 12.5 million foreign tourists, an increase of 6.6%. The latest figures from the Frontur survey of foreign tourist movement shows that Germany provided one third of these tourists, with the UK close behind on 30%.
The Spanish total for January to September was 66.1 million, a rise of ten per cent. Catalonia, with almost eight per cent more tourists (a total of 15.7 million) was the leading region, as is always the case. The Balearics came second, which is also normal. The Canaries received 10.4 million tourists and Andalusia 9.3 million.
The UK provided more tourists to Spain than other markets. The 15.4 million was up by almost eight per cent. The German figure was 9.6 million, just ahead of the French on 9.3 million.
In September alone there were 8.8 million tourists, growth of over eleven per cent. In the Balearics, the figure just broke the two million mark in September: there were 2,009,168, an increase of almost eight per cent over 2016.
According to the Balearic government's annual tourism report for 2016, which used both its own statistics and the Frontur data, there were 12,994,712 foreign tourists for the whole year. That figure seems destined to be passed this year.
The Frontur figures don't of course include the number of Spanish tourists. For the whole of 2016 there were almost 2.4 million Spanish tourists in the Balearics.