The desire to travel drives the sector: British tourists expected this Easter exceed pre-Covid figures by 12% and Germans by 31%
This is the first Easter without restrictions since 2019 due to the pandemic and the desire to travel is not stopped by the rise in prices or the economic uncertainty due to the conflict in Ukraine. This was confirmed this Tuesday by the Secretary of State for Tourism, Fernando Vallés, who assessed that the reservations of national tourists for this Easter are already 7% above the same dates in 2019.
In addition, international tourists, so important for the Spanish tourism sector, show an “increasingly intense” behavior, having already recovered 87% of flight reservations to Spain, which places our country among the four most booked destinations of the world for this Holy Week, together with Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Greece, Valdés commented in an interview on TVE.
There are even destinations that have already exceeded the level of foreign tourist reservations prior to the pandemic. These are Ibiza (+44%), Palma de Mallorca (+17%) and Tenerife (+8%), and others such as Las Palmas or Malaga that are only 2% below. “We perceive a total recovery in the tourism sector, there is a desire to travel and that is consolidating in the reserves,” assured the Secretary of State. In April 2019, a total of 7.2 million international travelers arrived in our country and the forecast of the Ministry of Tourism is that this month some 5.7 million will land in Spain, nothing to do with the little more than 600,000 people who they did on the same dates last year.
British and Germans
In the case of British tourism, the recovery is already being felt, especially in the archipelagos and the Mediterranean coast. Reservations from the United Kingdom are 12% higher than those made on these same dates before the pandemic, positioning the British again as the main issuing country. “As soon as the British have been allowed to come, they are returning to Spain with the same fidelity as always,” Valdés said. The rest of the countries that have increased their reservations the most compared to Easter 2019 are Denmark (+42%), Sweden (+36%), Germany (+31%) and Colombia (+29%).
In addition, the current situation of price increases is not affecting the sector “for now”. From the Ministry of Tourism they confirm that the desire to travel of Spaniards and Europeans “exceeds all conditions such as the war in Ukraine or the pandemic.” Thus, markets as important as the French already exceeded the spending levels of the same month of 2019 in February.
Looking ahead to summer, reservations for July and August are only 27% below those of 2019, a “very positive” figure considering that tourists now book much less in advance than before the pandemic.
Airports recover traffic
The recovery of tourism is evident in the large number of air operations that Spanish airports have been registering since March. Aena data published this Tuesday indicate that the airports in its network have already recovered 78% of the 2019 traffic, registering more than 15.5 million passengers. It is 390% more than the passengers who registered in March 2021, marked by mobility restrictions due to the pandemic.
Of the total passengers in March, 9.8 million traveled to or from international destinations, 24% less than in the same month of 2019. And 5.7 million did so on domestic flights, 17% less than before the pandemic .
The airport with the highest traffic was Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas, followed by Barcelona-El Prat, Málaga, Palma de Mallorca, Gran Canaria, Tenerife Sur, Alicante, Lanzarote, Seville and Valencia.
The data accumulated up to March indicate a recovery in passenger traffic of 72% compared to the same period in 2019 and an increase of 360% compared to 2021.
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