Spain’s tourism makes an 85 per cent recovery and closes 2022 with over 80 million international passengers

In December, passengers from international airports reached 5.7 million, which means that 95 per cent of pre-pandemic passengers have been recovered.

For the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, these figures show that “2022 has been the year of the recovery of our tourism. We have seen it with the excellent employment figures, with a record number of members in the tourism sector, and we see it with the arrival of international passengers.”

“This guarantees the strength of the sector and we anticipate a record 2023, a year that will also mark the definitive transition towards a quality tourism model”.

In the month of December, passengers to Spain increased from all the main countries. The markets that have registered the greatest recovery, compared to pre-pandemic figures, are Ireland, with 140,602 passengers (14.2 per cent more than in 2019), followed by France, with 492,101 passengers (5.8 per cent more) and Portugal, with 216,833 passengers (4.0 per cent more than in the same month of 2019).

For the year as a whole, 2.2 million passengers arrived from Ireland, 6.5 million from France and 2.6 million from Portugal.

In terms of volume, the United Kingdom was the leading issuer of passengers in December (1,158,536), representing 20.1 per cent of the total share of arrivals, followed by Germany with 726,697 (12.6 per cent share) and Italy, with 532,877 (9.3 per cent).

The arrival of British passengers (18.5 million in the total year) has had an impact on all the autonomous communities, but especially in the Canary Islands; this community has also benefited from the arrival of German passengers (11.9 million in 2022).

The arrival of Italians (7.1 million in the whole of last year) mainly benefited Madrid and Catalonia.