Busiest year ever for Spanish tourism

As the annual FITUR tourism event is about to get underway, Spain’s Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu, has valued “the extraordinary performance of tourism in 2023”, a record year – more than 84 million international tourists, and more than 108 billion in spending, the best figures in the historical series – which has confirmed the change in the Spanish tourism model.

These closing figures for 2023, advanced by Turespaña, mean that Spain exceeds the number of tourists in the pre-pandemic reference year of 2019 by 1%, and the spending of that same year by 17.4%. By 2022, the number of visitors will increase by 19%, and a 23.8% increase in tourist spending. It is of course worth noting that the cost of everything has increased in 2023, from travel to hotels, from food to leisure, and so much of the increase in spending is forced revenue.

In a press conference at the Ministry of Industry and Tourism, Hereu also assured that “according to the forecasts prepared by Turespaña, the first quarter of this year will exceed the number of visitors in the first quarter of 2023 by 10.8% (anticipating 23 million travellers in four months), with 18.5% more spending (around 30 billion euro between January and April). “We must continue to promote and take care of the tourism sector, one of the pillars of our economy, with policies that make it more sustainable, fairer for workers, territories and citizens, and at the same time attractive for visitors throughout the year,” stressed Hereu, who also wanted to clarify that “we should not focus only on battle of quantity nor sacralise the number of people who dress us, but rather pay more attention to spending at the destination and other parameters that have to do with sustainability and quantity.

To complete the balance for 2023, the minister has referred to the historical affiliation data of the tourism sector. Last year ended with 2.5 million members, a growth of 5.4% in December compared to December 2002, and more employees in the sector than ever (6.4% more). Figures that indicate, in the words of Hereu, that “Spain has managed to reduce temporary employment and increase salaries, which shows that, in tourism, as in many other sectors, this virtuous circle is occurring through which we are generating economic prosperity at the same time we expand labour rights”.

In his speech, in which he was accompanied by the Secretary of State, Rosana Morillo, and the general director of Turespaña, Miguel Sanz, the head of Tourism highlighted the investments made in recent years by the Government, through of the European funds channelled through the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, and which have amounted to more than 3.4 billion euro in aid to transform and modernise the tourism industry.

Fitur 2024: sustainability objective

A few days before the start of FITUR 2024, one of the most important tourism fairs held annually in the world, Jordi Hereu recalled the importance of this event for the tourism industry in the country. In this year’s edition, the backbone of FITUR will be sustainability and accessibility, “precisely two of the challenges that this Government has set for itself in this legislature and for which we are working, together with the private sector, to make them 100% reality”, the minister pointed out.

The 44th edition of FITUR will begin at IFEMA on Wednesday, January 24 for professionals, and on Saturday, January 27 for the general public. This year it will have more than 8,500 exhibiting companies and 136,000 professionals and, as in previous editions, there will be specialized areas such as Fitur Woman, Fitur Talent and Fitur LGTB+.

12.5 million euro in tourism promotion

Turespaña, the public body dependent on the Ministry of Industry and Tourism that promotes Spain as a tourist destination, has invested more than 12.5 million euro in 2023 in advertising and marketing campaigns to publicise Spanish destinations in sending countries and markets. Among the main milestones, the Picasso Year campaign stands out, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the painter’s death, and the ‘branded content’ actions with National Geographic and Conde Nast Traveler or the campaign to promote Spain as a ‘tax free’ shopping destination’ in the post-Brexit United Kingdom.

In this new edition of FITUR, Turespaña will have a 605 m2 space, located in pavilion 9 of IFEMA, which will house an agora for public presentations and with capacity for 90 people, a presentation room, LED screen space and offices institutional. In addition, this year a new panel linked to Turespaña’s 40 years of campaigns with Miró’s logo and a summary of the organization’s historical campaigns since its creation in 1984 is incorporated.

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