Often marking the start of the holiday season in Spain, the month of May saw an increase in visitor numbers of 11.7% compared to the same month of last year.
7,943,825 foreign visitors arrived in Spain during May
According to the latest international tourism figures from the governments central statistics unit, the total number of people visiting Spain from overseas reached 7,943,825 during May, representing a year on year increase of 11.7%.
Almost a year since the Brexit vote it appears that the British love affair with Spain is not over as the number of visitors from the UK during the same month grew 14% compared with May of 2016. In fact Brits made up just over a quarter of all foreign visitors to Spain with 2.04 million arrivals.
The rise in UK visitor numbers is not isolated to May, 25% of the 27.9 million foreign visitors to Spain during the first five months of this year have been from the UK, totalling 6.4 million visitors this represents an increase of 10.9%.
Elsewhere, the other traditional markets for Spanish tourism – France and Germany – failed to equal the growth in British visitors, numbers of arrivals from France rose only 0..2% whilst arrivals from Germany actually dropped 0.1%. However there were sharp increases in secondary markets with the USA, Scandinavia and Ireland each recording increases of 43.2%, 388.8% and 20.1% respectively.
As expected the UK made up a substantial share of visitors to the main coastal resorts with Brits accounting for 44.2% of visitors to the Canary Islands, 38.2% to Comunidad Valencia and 29.4% to Andalucía.