The Ministry of Industry, through Turespaña, released its comprehensive Summer Trends Reports today, detailing the outlook for the 2024 summer tourism season. These reports, created by a network of tourism counselors around the globe, provide deep insights into economic conditions, social-political factors, and recent tourism demand developments, offering forecasts for various international markets.
Spain is poised to remain a leading destination for summer 2024, as highlighted by the optimistic insights from the 25 detailed market analyses.
Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu, expressed optimism about the upcoming season, predicting it could surpass the travel activity of 2023, following an already strong winter season.
In addition, and with regard to the main markets contained in the report (United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and the United States), Spain is clearly above its most direct competitors.
In particular, the United Kingdom, Spain’s primary tourism source market, shows promising growth with air travel capacities for the summer increasing by over 8% from the previous year. For France, Spain retains its status as the top vacation spot following the French homeland, indicating a potentially vibrant summer influx of French tourists.
Germany, despite its economic challenges, is expected to see continued travel interest to Spain during the summer. Meanwhile, travel from Italy is also on the rise, with a 13.8% increase in air travel capacities over the previous year, suggesting robust travel intent and consideration among Italian tourists.
The United States, a key market for its long-haul travel and high profitability, shows a significant increase in direct flight capacities to Spain, set to grow by over 16% this summer.
Finally, China shows a gradual recovery in its tourism sector, given the continued increase in air capacity, the increase in visa demand and the strong performance of the market during the first two months of the year, which registered a 19% increase in the number of travellers to Spain compared to 2019.
Expectations for the 2024 summer season for this market indicate a marked 49.8 per cent increase in air assets between Spain and China, marking the most significant growth among competitors.
May Arrivals and Spending Forecast
As May approaches, the Ministry of Industry and Tourism has released forecasts for the arrival of international tourists and tourist spending, based on predictions by Turespaña.
Indications are that May will once again be an exceptional month, continuing the trend set in the early months of 2024.
The forecast suggests that during this month, Spain will welcome 9.49 million international tourists, a 14% increase compared to May 2023.
Additionally, it is estimated that these tourists will spend nearly 12 billion euros in May, representing an increase of about 22% from the same month last year.
