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All the forecasts were correct. Last year, 2023, was the best year for tourism in Spain in history. The sector has not only recovered from the shock of the coronavirus pandemic, but all the records of 2019, previously the best, have been surpassed. The national government's Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu, announced in a press conference that in 2023 more than 84 million international tourists arrived in Spain, surpassing by 1 per cent the levels of 2019, which left 108 billion euros in the country, some 17.4% more than in 2019.
«The year 2023 is the record year for the development of tourism in Spain, especially in the areas that interest us most: tourist income and employment generation,» said the minister, accompanied by the Secretary of State for Tourism, Rosa Murillo, and the director of Turespaña, Miguel Sanz. In terms of employment, all records have also been broken.
In December alone, the number of people working in the sector increased by 132,000 to close the year with the highest number of employees in the sector on record with over 2.5 million accounting for 12.5% of the total number of Social Security members in the economy. Salaried employees increased by 6.4% in 2023 and the self-employed by 1.1%.
«The impact of the tourism sector is fundamental for the rest of the economy», stressed the minister, who assured that his department is not going to be complacent, and that these figures will lead the government to be more demanding in order to «continue to take care of this magnificent economic sector that Spain has as a country».
«We must not rest on our laurels, the fact that more than 84 million people around the world are visiting us is an expression of success», Hereu pointed out.
The outlook for 2024 remains very positive. The ministry's figures for the first four months of the year - which this year includes Easter - reveal that 23.2 million tourists will arrive, some 11 per cent more than in the same period in 2023, with spending at the destination increasing by almost 19 per cent to 30.5 billion euros.
One of the most recurrent complaints from the sector itself is the proliferation of illegal tourist apartments, which the government wants to put a stop to through a «state strategy» to be defined in the working group to be set up with the Ministry of Housing. «The tourist offer has to be regulated, in each area we have to build a mix that is also socially sustainable to avoid the phenomena of reaction against tourism,» said the head of the sector, who recalled that the regions are able to regulate the apartments.
The minister also emphasised the importance of «diversifying» the countries of origin of tourists arriving in Spain, with Europe as a «fundamental asset», but «fighting the battle in intercontinental tourism», which leaves more added value. In addition, territorial diversification as «the key to reducing pressure on congested areas in order to feed the least-populated areas of Spain with prosperity», Hereu pointed out. In this sense, he stressed that the role of the Government is to put destinations that historically had not been tourist destinations on the map for international tourists.
The figures presented this week by Exceltur, the tourism sector's employers' association, are even better. It should be borne in mind that their calculations correspond to total tourism, not just international tourism, and so they put the sector's revenue in 2023 at 187 billion euros , reaching 12.8% of GDP, an all-time record. According to their calculations, tourism accounts for two thirds of the real growth of the Spanish economy (71%) and without tourism the Spanish economy would have grown by only 0.8%, instead of the 2.4% estimated by the Bank of Spain.
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