Strong Tourism Growth Provides Encouragement For Spanish Property Market

Published: 9th September 2013

With the news of the Spanish banking crisis controlling much of the European media over the past two weeks, it was good to see some more positive news released showing an increase in the overall number of tourist visitors to Spain in 2012. The figures, which was released by the Spanish Institute of Tourist Statistics (Frontur) showed that the overall number of tourists visiting Spain in the first five months of 2012 in fact increased by a total of 2.4% in comparison with the same period in 2011.

Jose Manuel Soria, reporting from the latest Survey Of Tourist Movements highlighted that although the largest markets for tourist visitors to Spain remained the UK, Germany and France, the largest increases had been from the US and Swiss markets. The figures also went on to show the amongst the regions, Catalonia, in particular the popular tourist destination of Barcelona received the highest percentage of visitors, with over 25% of all tourist visitors to Spain.

The figures, which cover the January to May period, showed that the number of tourist visitors to Spain from the UK actually decreased 2.3% for the period, representing a total of 4.3 million visitors. However, despite the decrease, the UK remains the largest market for visitors to Spain, closely followed by Germany which saw an increase of 6.4% for the period up to May. In more positive news for the airline industry, the number of visitors to Spain by air continued to increase, growing by 3.6% for the period meaning over 80% of all tourist visitors to Spain now do so via air.

It is undoubted that the beleagured Spanish property market requires a strong tourism industry to initiate a long term recovery. As such, it is positive news for owners of property in Spain that tourism demand remains bouyant depsite the more challenging economic conditions in the majority of its target tourism markets.

More information on: Property for sale in Spain | Holiday rental property in Spain 

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