Alex Trelinski
SPAIN will welcome 110 million foreign tourists annually by 2040 and become the world’s biggest holiday destination according to a study by Google and Deloitte.
It will inevitably lead to more pressure on the two most visited cities- Madrid and Barcelona, where residents are worried about tourist saturation.
The conclusions come from the Next Gen Travellers and Destinations report compiled by the two companies.
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Analysing figures from 2019, they say that Madrid was the fifth ranked city in the world for most visitors, with Barcelona seventh.
They’ve not reached a conclusion about how busy they will be in 15 years time, but state that Spain will have 110 million tourists- overhauling France with five million fewer.
The study shows that the tourists that visited Spain’s two largest cities in 2019 came from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France and Italy.
They say the foreign profile has shifted since then with the UK, US and Germany now being joined by visitors from China, India, and South Korea.
On the flip side, by 2040 over 30 million people from Spain will go on holiday abroad, as opposed to nearly 20 million last year.
The growth though is seen as lower than other countries and Spain will disappear from the Top 15 list of international travellers.
