Spain’s tourism coffers suffer as UK visitors plummet by 90pc
FOUR times as many Germans than Britons visited Spain in June as the UK maintained crippling travel restrictions despite the success of the vaccine programme.
Tight travel restrictions have crushed British tourism in Spain after a near90pc slump in visitors this year – the biggest fall in numbers of any economy – with just 273,000 tourists in the first six months of 2021, according to official Spanish figures.
The plunge contrasts with a 12pc fall in German visitor numbers after Berlin removed Mallorca from its restricted list in March. Britons faced quarantine on their return to the UK in June even after holidays became legal again from mid-may.
More than 1.1m Germans have visited the country this year. In June, Spain hosted 142,500 Britons in contrast to more than 500,000 Germans, indicating the UK is still lagging behind on reopening the borders despite its lead in vaccinations and Madrid’s enthusiasm to encourage tourists back. Spain’s beach resorts and islands are utterly reliant on visitors’ spending their cash.
This is better than June 2020, when travel was just reopening. A year ago fewer than 10,000 sun-seekers landed from the UK alongside just under 35,000 from Germany.
However, it compares catastrophically with June 2019, in the pre-pandemic age when more than 2m Britons and 1m Germans visited the Iberian peninsular, making them the top two nationalities making the journey. France was third with almost 960,000 in the same month.
In total, the country received 2.2m visitors in June, just a quarter of the 8.8m travelled there in June 2019.
The numbers come as Boris Johnson scrapped plans to create an “amber watchlist” for British tourists that could leave visitors facing the threat of a sudden move to the red list, forcing expensive hotel quarantine on their return.
It would have risked denting confidence in travellers to countries potentially including Spain, just after visits had become more certain with the decision to exempt fully vaccinated returnees from having to isolate at home for a spell.
Official jobs data published on Tuesday suggested that the belated and still limited influx of holidaymakers is starting to feed through to Spain’s economy. Unemployment fell by almost 200,000 in July, according to the Ministry of Labour, in a record monthly drop in registered joblessness.