Spain reliant on domestic visitors

THE economic crisis means Spanish hotels will have more domestic than foreign tourists this summer for the first time in decades, an industry official predicts.

In the 1980s an estimated 70% of tourists were foreigners, said Roman Estalella, head of the Spanish Confederation of Hotels and Tourist Accommodation.

This year, “Spaniards will spend less on travel by staying” within the country, while the number of overseas tourists will be down by 8% as the economic crisis hits both Spain itself and its source markets for tourism.

He said May and June have been “very bad”.

For the first time, the percentage of domestic tourists taking holidays in Spanish hotels will exceed that of foreigners, he said.

Spain saw a huge boom in tourism development in the 1960s and 70s, leading to it becoming one of the world’s top destinations. It received 57.4 million visitors last year, a 2.6% drop from 2007 and the first fall since the current recording system was introduced in 1995.

Last week, the UN World Tourism Organisation announced that Spain had fallen from second to third among the world’s favourite destinations, behind France and the United States.