Euro Weekly News

TOURISM on the Costa del Sol has seen an increase of nine per cent this summer, after it emerged that 3.6 million visitors passed through Andalucia.

Of that figure, 31.5 per cent stayed in the province of Malaga during July, making it by far the most popular in the region. The figures, which come from regional tourism and economic departments respectively, show that the number of people staying in Andalucia was up 6.3 per cent from last July, while the amount of nightly stays also rose by 4.5 per cent.

Andalucian tourism chief, Paulino Plata, was upbeat about the figures which saw hotels on the Costa del Sol being 73.3 per cent filled by 500,000 tourists, more than half of whom were Spaniards. The average expenditure of tourists was 45.58 euros a day, making income go up to 176 million euros throughout Andalucia.

However, by far the majority of people visiting Andalucia were Spaniards with 65.9 per cent of the total, while the British came in second with 21.8 per cent and the Germans third with 13 per cent.

The statistics also show that the average stay was 4.15 days and the level of occupation compared with those available in the region was at 63.1 per cent. The recovery of the German market has also been notable with tourists from that country increasing by more than four per cent in July.

This trend was reflected nationally with increases of 4.5 per cent for travellers and 7.9 per cent for nightly stays.

Loyal holidaymakers have returned to the southern coast after cheaper fares meant travelling further afield possible. Resorts in Turkey, Croatia, Bulgaria and Thailand, all became popular alternatives to the Costa del Sol in the past couple of years.

As a result, tourism slowly diminished here on the coast, businesses struggled and the question on everyone’s lips was: where have all the tourists gone?

But now Spain has regained its popularity with the coast experiencing the best tourist season since 2001. Tourists have rediscovered the appeal of Spain and recovered its legion of sun worshippers and sangria drinkers.

In July, hotel occupancy was more than 85 per cent across many of the coast’s resorts – despite many new establishments opening recently to cater for the renewed demand.

It has also been revealed that the average tourist spend will be 1.8 billion euros by the time the summer season is finished. This figure will bring the spend up by eight per cent on previous years.

Paulino Plata, regional councillor for tourism, described the figures as ‘excellent’.