ARCHIVED - Just 18,000 British visitors to Spain this March, down from 1.5 million in March 2019!

Foreign tourism in Spain is still at minimal levels as the sector awaits re-activation

The drastic effect of the coronavirus pandemic on the international tourism sector in Spain is once again clearly illustrated by the figures published on Thursday relating to March, when despite the re-activation of a few flights between the Costas and central and northern Europe just 490,088 visitors from abroad are reported to have come to this country.

On the one hand, this represents a considerable increase over the totals reported the month before (284,311) and of course during the first wave of contagion last spring (zero in April and May 2020), but for a valid comparison it is necessary to go back to March 2019, when Spain welcomed 5.65 million people from other countries. This indicates that this March the sector was operating at only around 8.6 per cent of what might be considered a normal level, and underlines the keenness of all those involved for visitors to begin returning en masse this summer.

The real importance of tourism is, of course, economic. In 2019 the sector as a whole accounted for approximately 11 per cent of GDP in Spain, and the March figures for the amount spent by foreign tourists again show how the sector has been decimated. It is calculated that visitors from abroad spent just 512.6 million euros while in this country in March, whereas two years ago the equivalent figure was just over 6 billion: again, current levels are only just over 8 per cent of where they were in 2019.

Despite the rules imposed this winter by Boris Johnson’s government, it is reported that during March just over 18,000 UK nationals visited Spain, spending an estimated 20 million euros, but of course these figures bear practically no comparison to those of March 2019 (1.46 million visitors and 1 billion euros respectively).