Dimitris Kouimtsidis
HOTEL overnight stays in Spain have dropped by 61.1% in March, compared to the same month last year.
According to the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (INE), the coronavirus crisis accounted for an almost two-thirds decrease in hotel overnight stays last month.
This is the first official statistic that has been revealed reflecting the impact the pandemic has had on the Spanish hotel industry, which has almost completely stopped, apart from a small number of exceptions.
Although the first two weeks of the month were as normal – before the declaration of the state of emergency on March 14 and the order for all hotels to close on March 19 – the drop in overnight stays for the whole month was 8.3 million, compared to last year.
This drop of 61.1% for the month means that the quarterly drop for the first three months of the year is at 21.6%, compared to the same period in 2019.
This drop was mostly seen from foreigners, with 5.3 million less overnight stays, which represents 58.9%.
Spaniards also had a significant drop, at almost 3 million stays, which represents a percentage of 64.6%.
British and German tourists were the main clients of Spanish hoteliers, accounting for 23.5% and 21.6% of overnight stays respectively.
In both cases however they stayed less than half the nights they did in the same month last year.
The top three regions with the highest overnight hotel stays were the Canary Islands, followed by Andalucia and then Catalunya.
Not a single region managed to reach even half the amount of overnight stays as they did in March 2019.
