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Date Published: 24/08/2023

Tourism numbers in Alicante bounce back to pre-pandemic levels

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Benidorm accounted for more than half of all hotel stays in the province in July

Tourism numbers in Alicante bounce back to pre-pandemic levels

Tourism is booming in Alicante this summer and after a few hard years, the sector has performed a spectacular rebound and is now doing better than even before the coronavirus pandemic. The latest figures from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) published this week show that a whopping 379,641 visitors descended on the province during the month of July, culminating in more than 2 million hotel stays.

And this figure is likely to grow, since data from other holiday hubs like Torrevieja are yet to be added.

In Spain as a whole, hotel overnight stays stood at 42.1 million, 2.5% more than last year, just 0.1% shy of 2019’s figures.

Benidorm was the place to be this high season, attracting an incredible 60% of all hotel guests in Alicante last month with 1,227,448 overnight bookings. Thanks to an influx of foreign tourists, Benidorm is now ranked as number five in Spain for the highest number of stays in one month.

In this respect, the party hotspot beat out the numbers seen in 2019 with 691,457 overnight guests.

According to the INE, the average stay in Benidorm was 4.81 days per traveller, a figure higher than the national average, where the stay had been reduced to 3.4 days, 0.6% less than last year.

The occupancy rate per room was 83.02%. However, the bump in foreign tourists was counteracted by a drop in domestic travel, although the experts believe that this temporary blip was due to the general elections in July.

Overall in Alicante, foreign tourism has recovered strongly according to the INE data, rising from 128,223 overnight stays in July 2019 to 131,983 last month.

Last month, Andalucia, Catalonia and the Valencian Community were the three most popular destinations in Spain for holidaymakers, accounting for 23.8%, 15.2% and 12.8% of the total overnight stays, respectively.

In terms of international tourism, Alicante and the Valencia Community ranked fifth in Spain with 5.6% of all hotel stays, following behind the Balearic Islands (35.5%), Catalonia (20.9%), the Canary Islands (18.4%) and Andalucia (10.9%).

In other news: Expat sentenced to 18 years in Alicante for murdering his partner

Image: Zarateman via Wikimedia Commons

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