Alex Trelinski
A SURVEY of online travel booking website users has crowned Alicante as the number one destination for British travellers to celebrate the Easter holidays.
The study from online flight portal JetCost says that the Costa Blanca city is also popular with Dutch tourists coming third in their list.
For Germans, it comes in fifth; sixth for the French; eighth for the Portuguese; and eleventh for Italians.
The city- along with the Costa Blanca region- boasts the traditional Semana Santa(Holy Week) commemorations culminating in Easter Day, which this year is on March 31.
Alicante is projecting visitor numbers at the same level- at least- for Easter as last year, which was a record.
There’s also no great surprise in the online search figures, as the first two months of 2024 have been the best-ever January and February for arrivals at Alicante-Elche airport.
With a combination of beaches, good weather, and its mixture of cultural and leisure offerings, Alicante is well positioned to do well in the first big tourist period of the year.
As for domestic travellers, Alicante goes down to 17 in the JetCost study, but an important proviso is that it covers flights and hotels- ignoring the fact that a large number of home-bred tourists travel by road or train.
The company says they are looking at real search engine searches, stating that the figures are ‘very reliable’ and have focused on the Easter period where a ‘large majority opted for the Valencia region and especially Alicante’.
Jetcost’s Marketing Director, Ignazio Ciarmoli, said that it will be ‘a record-breaking Easter, with record hotel and flight searches’.
He added that the Alicante area continues be one of the ‘world’s great tourist destinations’.
“Many of the Europeans who have decided to travel during Easter 2024 are choosing Spain,” he stated.
Ciarmoli put that down to ‘the spring weather throughout the country, the richness of the culture, the landscapes, the traditions, as well as the rich gastronomic and hospitality offerings’.
