News: Fewer Dutch and Belgian tourists to Spain

The Spanish Bureau of Statistics (INE) and Frontur have announced the figures for the international tourists who came to Spain in April and up to and including that month.

From this it can be concluded that 7.2 million holiday makers came to Spain in April and over 21 million foreign tourists visited Spain during the first 4 months.

April

7,169,675 foreigners came to Spain in April to enjoy a vacation or visit, an increase of 5.7% compared to April 2018. The largest group of tourists came from Great Britain with 1.47 million (+3, 5%) followed by Germany with 1.08 million (+ 17.9%) and France with 1.02 million (-2%) tourists.

In April, however, the number of Dutch and Belgian tourists fell to 295,081 (-9.2%) Dutch and 244,403 (-2%) Belgian holidaymakers.

First quarter

During the first quarter (January to April), 21,958,989 foreign tourists came to Spain, an increase of 4.4% compared to the same period in 2018.

Here too the largest group was (as always) the British with 4.27 million (+ 0.1%) followed by the Germans with 2.95 million (+ 6.5%), the French with 2.7 million (- 2%) and the Scandinavians with 1.71 million (-5.3%).

With regard to Dutch holidaymakers, this number fell by -5.3% during the first quarter to a total of 837,994 tourists. With regard to Belgian tourists, this rose by + 1.1% to 667,535 holidaymakers during the first four months of this year.

Regions

As always, Catalonia (Costa Brava, (Costa) Barcelona, Costa Dorada) is the most visited region with 4,894,335 (+ 4.8%) foreign tourists followed by the Canary Islands with 4,784,650 (-0.9%) and Andalusia with 3,189,668 (+ 8.1%) tourists.

During the first four months of this year the Madrid region received 2,407,624 (+ 8.8%) tourists followed by the Comunidad Valenciana or Valencia region with 2,344,275 (+ 2.1%) and the Balearic Islands with 1,773,704 (+ 10.3%) foreign holiday makers.