ARCHIVED - Foreign tourism recovery remains slow in Benidorm on the Costa Blanca
Less than 10 per cent of hotel bookings in the Marina Baixa resort, Alicante province, at the weekend were international travellers.
Benidorm hotels are starting to see an upturn in tourism recovery, but July has got off to a slow start in terms of foreign reservations, which accounted for just nine per cent of all bookings last weekend.
While the figures are a move in the right direction for the popular resort's hotel sector, it's a long way off the international tourism data of previous years, and also short of the 32.6 per cent of non-Spanish bookings made in Valencia city for the first weekend of July.
According to the Hotel and Tourism Business Association of the Valencian Community (Hosbec), Benidorm barely reached 51.9 per cent hotel occupancy last week, due, in part, "to new hotel reopenings elsewhere, meaning there were more destinations to choose from".
Currently, around 80 per of hotels in Benidorm are back in business, pending the opening of the international borders, 89 establishments in total and nine more than the last week in June.
And it appears that domestic tourism is not only keeping Benidorm hotels afloat, but also establishments across the Costa Blanca which continue to be overwhelmingly dominated by the Spanish travellers, with 63.7 per cent of the rooms occupied between June 28 and July 4 (in Alicante province excluding Benidorm).
Over the weekend, these establishments reached an average occupancy rate of 78.2 per cent, with 89 per cent of the rooms booked by Spanish tourists, with the remainder international travellers.
Meanwhile, hotel reservations in Alicante province (excluding Benidorm) are up a third on last year.
IMAGE: Archive