Dire impact of coronavirus crisis on Spain’s Costa Almeria tourism sector reflected in the figures

EMPTY BEACHES: Visitor figures plummeted in March CREDIT: Ayuntamiento de Vera @aytovera

THE dire impact of the coronavirus crisis on the Costa Almeria’s tourism sector is reflected in the figures.
The Andalucia Institute of Statistics and Cartography’s report on visitor numbers and overnight stays for the first quarter of the year show a sharp drop, even though the State of Alarm did not come into force until halfway through March.
January and February went pretty much as normal, but the sudden introduction of the lockdown and the restrictions on travel and movement the following month pushed down the overall number of visitors for the quarter by nearly 25 per cent to just over 270,000.
This represents nearly 90,000 less than in the same period of 2019 and was the worst figure since 2014.
Of those who did visit the province over the first three months of this year, 80 per cent were on holiday and 20 per cent were visiting family or friends. The average length of a stay was 7.4 days.
Average spending per visitor was also down, falling by 5 per cent to €62.5.

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Written by

Cathy Elelman

Cathy Elelman is the local writer for the Costa de Almeria edition of the Euro Weekly News.

Based in Mojacar for the last 21 years, Cathy is very much part of the local community and is always well and truly up on all the latest news and events going on in this region of Spain.

Her top goals are to do the best job she can informing the local English-speaking community, visitors to the area and the wider world about about the news in Almeria, to learn something new every day, and to embrace very new challenge this fast-changing world brings her way.

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