Alex Trelinski
AMERICAN tourist numbers in Spain are rising and visitors are also spending big.
Spain’s Institute of Tourism- Turespaña- says spending by trans-Atlantic tourists is up by 35% on pre-pandemic levels.
It remains a smallish percentage of foreign tourist expenditure with UK visitors dominating, but the proportion of money spent by Americans is rising each year.
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With tourism contributing around 14% of Spain’s GDP, the high-spending Stateside arrivals are boosting the economy.
Turespaña noted what it called a ‘robust’ increase in the US market last year with total visits up up by 15% and a 35% spike in spending compared to 2019.
In raw figures, there were more than 3.8 million US visitors last year compared to 3.3 million in 2019.
Money left in Spanish coffers rose from €5.8 billion to over €7.8 billion in 2023.
The trend is continuing upwards with the first half of 2024 reporting a 13.3% rise on US tourists compared to 2023- exceeding two million visitors.
Turespaña estimates that expenditure from Americans this year has easily risen by double figures.
The boom in American arrivals is heightened by people wanting to travel abroad and also attracted by Spain.
Air connections have improved substantially in recent years with 11 US cities directly connected to five Spanish airports, including new routes from New York to Malaga, Mallorca, and Tenerife.
Economist and tourism expert at CaixaBank Research, David Cesar Heymann, said: “Although the vast majority of spending continues to come from European tourists, those from North America have experienced substantial progress and this contrasts with the fall in Asian tourism, which has lagged behind.”
He put the Asian fall down to pandemic restrictions lingering in China and the weakness of the yen in Japan.
