The tourism sector in Spain has been expressing some concern that the historically two largest foreign markets - the UK and Germany - have not, in combination, recovered to what they were before the pandemic.
To end-November 2023, these markets accounted for 26.7 million of a total of 79.9 million visitors. For the first eleven months of 2019, the combined total was 28 million out of a total of 79.4 million.
These figures contrast with those of the Balearics, where the UK and Germany contributed 8.2 million tourists by the end of November last year, whereas in 2019 the combined total was 8.1 million.
For Spain as a whole, the larger of the two markets was the UK - 16.4 million tourists by November 2023. Germany registered 10.2 million, a number which was in fact below that of France (11 million). In 2019, the figures were, respectively, 17.3 million and 10.7 million. The French market in 2019 was 10.6 million.
For the Balearics, allowing for some rounding-up of the figures, the numbers were almost identical in both 2019 and 2023 - Germany 4.5 million, UK 3.7. Both markets showed slight increases over 2019.
Although there were worries about the cost-of-living impact on the Balearics two main markets in 2023, these proved to be unfounded. And for 2024, there are no indications that either market is about to go into reverse. On the contrary, as TUI, for example, plans to carry more tourists to the Balearics than ever before - over two million and so above a previous ceiling of 1.9 million.
For Spain, it is fallacious to talk in terms of the two main markets. There are clearly three. The growth of the French market is mirrored in the Balearics, where there was an increase of over 200,000 tourists from November 2019 to November 2023 - up to 963,000.
Nationally, the loss of UK and German tourists is being compensated for. As an example, US tourism has grown in the region of 500,000.
In the Balearics, there is no void with UK and Germany. Scandinavia has been an issue - a loss of 200,000 tourists since 2019 and of 400,000, if one goes back to 2017. But generally speaking, given the staggering increase in Balearic tourist numbers in 2023, it is a case of growth in markets other than the big two that helps to explain why the final figures for 2023 will show an increase of 1.2 million or 1.3 million over the previous record year of 2018.