Holiday destination: Hotels in Spain report record overnight stays and prices

Despite a sharp increase in room prices, hotels in Spain achieved a record number of overnight stays last year. In 2024, the number of overnight stays rose by almost five percent to 363.6 million compared to the previous year’s high, said the statistics agency INE.

The hotels in the popular holiday destination are becoming increasingly expensive. According to INE, the average room price achieved rose by 7.4 percent to 121.5 euros last year. The average utilization still increased and was 61.4 percent. That is 2.2 percent more than in 2023, it said.

Brits and Germans at the front

Hotel guests from abroad were primarily responsible for the record overnight stays, with an increase of 7.5 percent (to around 242 million). Visitors from Great Britain and Germany stood out here, with 60.3 and 42.6 million overnight stays respectively.

For Germans, this corresponded to an increase of 8.2 percent compared to 2023. Meanwhile, the number of overnight stays by domestic customers only increased by 0.2 percent in Spain last year.

The islands are the most popular

With a total of 49.5 million overnight stays (over three and a half million more than in the previous year), the Mediterranean island of Mallorca was once again the most popular destination last year. In the ranking of Spain’s autonomous communities, which correspond to the German federal states, the Balearic Islands took second place with 23.9 percent of all overnight stays by visitors from abroad behind the Canary Islands, which were at the top with 26.3 percent.

With a share of more than twelve percent of gross domestic product, the tourism sector in Spain is considered the most important economic factor in the fourth-largest EU economy. It employs more than 2.5 million people.