Latest figures for foreign tourism in Spain

Number of foreign tourists visiting Spain this year increases

The sun and beaches continue to attract foreign tourists to Spain. In the first 6 months of this year the number of foreign tourists visiting Spain went up by 2.6% to 26.6 million compared to figures for the same period last year.

According to the Survey on the Movement of Tourists published today by the Ministry for Industry, Tourism and Commerce Spain received 5.7 million foreign tourists which is 0.7% less than for the same month in 2007.

Catalonia is the most popular destination for foreign tourists and received 6.6 million tourists between January and June this year which accounts for 24.8% of the total followed by the Canary Islands which received 4.7 million tourists (15.6% of the total). Andalucia was in third place with 3.7 million foreign tourists (14.1% of the total). The Comunidad Valenciana received 2.6 million foreign tourists (10.1% of the total) and the Comiunidad de Madrid received 2.

3 million foreign tourists (8.7% of the total).

The survey found that 7.3 million tourists were from the United Kingdom (27.5% of the total) which is 1% more than for the same period last year. Germany is in second place with 4.7 million of its citizens visiting Spain during the first 6 months of this year which is 2.8% more than for the same period last year. French visitors numbered 3.6 million and Italians visiting Spain number 1.5 million.

Out of all the foreign tourists visiting Spain this year between January and June 18.4 million tourists visited independently (7% more than for the same period last year) and the number of tourists visiting Spain which were not on package tours continued to decrease. In fact the number of tourists coming on package tours went down by 6.8% during this period.

Arriving by air continued to be the most popular form of travel with 20.

9 million tourists arriving this way (78.5% of the total) an increase of 2.8%. The preferred type of accommodation continues to be hotels (65.9% of the total) which is an increase of 3.8% while the number of people not staying hotels remained the same at 8.8 million which is the same as 2007.

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