Madrid, Feb 3 (IANS): The number of tourists visiting Spain in 2021 and the amount of money they spent there during their stay were both higher than a year earlier but considerably below the pre-pandemic levels, according to two studies published here.
The "Statistics on Tourist Movement on the Borders and Tourist Expenditure Survey" (also known as FRONTUR-EGATUR) conducted by the Spanish Statistical Office (INE) shows that 2.9 million foreign tourists visited the country in December 2021 - a significant improvement on the same month in 2020, when visits by only 648,989 foreigners were logged, reports Xinhua news agency.
Last year, a total of 31.1 million foreign visitors arrived in Spain, 64.4 per cent more that in 2020, but 62.7 per cent less than the 83.7 million tourists who spent their holidays in the country in 2019.
During the best part of the first half of 2021, Spain and many other countries had Covid-19-related travel restrictions in place.
France and Germany were the two biggest source markets for Spain's tourism industry, with 5,819,630 French and 5,196,230 Germans arriving in the country along with 4,295,052 tourists from the UK.
The EGATUR survey of tourist expenditure shows that in December last year, tourist spending increased to 3,542 million euros ($4,000 million) from 687 million euros in December 2020, raising the annual total to 34,816 million euros.
This is 76 per cent more than in 2020, but 62 per cent less than in 2019.
Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism Reyes Maroto indicated that the figures showed that despite the arrival of the Omicron variant of Covid-19, "December has been better than expected and that has allowed us to meet our predictions for the end of the year".
She said the data was "good, if we bear in mind the uncertainty that omicron has generated, but it has not had the negative impact that we expected".
The Minister insisted that "2022 will see the consolidation of the recovery of the sector and Spain is going to take advantage of its strengths in the face of other destinations".