Walter Finch
AS Spain’s tourism boom shows no signs of abating, it is the Balearics that lead the way – or bear the brunt.
New figures for August show that not only did the island receive the most visitors, but they also spent the most per person on average.
Of the 10.9 million tourists who descended upon Spain in the peak month of August, 22.4% of them (2.4 million) plumped for the Mediterranean islands.
They edged out second place Catalunya (20.9%), and left third-placed (and much larger) Andalucia in the shade with just 14.7% of the total.
READ MORE: Brits are flocking to Spain’s Balearic Islands: UK arrivals soar by 8% in first half of 2024
Despite topping the charts, the number of visitors to the Balearics represents a modest 3.7% increase on August 2023 – whereas Andalucia saw a near 10% jump in tourist numbers.
Yet the trend is clear – tourist numbers across Spain are up 13% year-on-year.
Each one of those 2.4 million visitors to the Balearics went on to spend, on average, a €1,455 during their stay – contributing a nationwide high of €3.6 billion to the regional economy in a single month.
This translates to approximately €2,952 per inhabitant of the Balearics, a figure that is up nearly 10% on last year.
On average, each tourist spent €215 a day in August – up 12.7%, but dwarfed by Madrid, where weekend trippers splashed out €342 a day.
In another boast for the Balearics, their tourism sector contributed almost a quarter (23.5%) of the overall spending by international visitors in Spain, which amounted to €15.3 billion.
This represents a 13% rise on the same period last year, underscoring that Spain’s current economic boom is driven by the international tourism sector.
However, it is actually a slight dip on spending from July, in which €15.5 billion was forked out by foreign tourists.
Despite the booming statistics, this success brings with it its own issues.
The number of people in Mallorca at any given time is close to breaking all records, according to new figures from the Balearic Statistics Institute (Ibestat).
Known as the ‘human pressure’ measurement, it found that on July 26, an all-time record high of 1,504,229 people were recorded on the island.
This combines the number of tourists on a single day with the resident population of approximately 1.2 million.
The absolute record for the Balearics as a whole is 2,106,209, which was recorded on August 9 2023.
The figures for August this year are not yet in, however.
