The Spanish Tourism Institute (Turespaña) is holding a major promotional gig in the United States under the title 'Spain Summit 2022' over the next few days. The event will take place in Miami and will be attended by 56 US travel agents and tour operators selected by Turespaña's four tourism departments in the United States (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami).
At the conference, the 56 American agents and tour operators will meet with 28 Spanish tourism companies and representatives of 17 Spanish destinations in a format that combines presentations, interactive events, food and wine presentations and will include up to 1,362 individual meetings between professionals from both countries.
The conference is the first of its kind to be launched in the US market since the pandemic began. The aim is to boost travel sales to Spain from the United States after the March 2020 forced shutdown, as well as to position Spain as a quality, safe and sustainable tourist destination.
The United States is an outbound tourism market with great potential and importance for Spain, both in terms of volume of arrivals and high spending. In 2019, tourist arrivals to Spain from the United States registered a record 3.3 million tourists, representing an expenditure of 5,773 million euros, and maintaining a trend with notable double-digit growth since 2017.
The US market remains optimistic about travelling in 2022, almost all air connections have been recovered and new routes will be opened, such as New York to Tenerife and Palma or Washington to Madrid. These will contribute to the objective of making Spain the fourth most visited European destination by tourists from the United States this year.
Turespaña will intensify its activity in this market, which is particularly important for city breaks. In 2021, the majority of US tourists visited Spain for leisure (79% of the total) and among the main activities they enjoyed were visits to cities (64%), shopping (56%) and cultural visits (51%), staying mostly in hotels (79%), with an average stay of 8.8 nights.
They mainly travelled without a package tour (90%), the average age was 41 years old and most travelled alone (31%), followed by those who travelled as a couple (29%) or with their family (21%).