Million UK visitors help put the vida back into España
SPAIN last month welcomed its highest number of tourists since the pandemic began, with ministers hailing the impact of one of Europe’s best vaccination rates.
Some 5.5million visitors – a fifth of them British – travelled to Spain in October amid an almost total lack of coronavirus restrictions.
With 80 per cent of the population vaccinated, Spain leads the world among countries with more than 20million citizens.
“It is clear that when travelling is made easier, such as with the removal of the British traffic light system, demand comes back,” said Reyes Maroto, Spain’s tourism minister.
Low infection levels and the success of Spain’s jabs campaign also played a key role in the recovery, officials said.
Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, said Spaniards had shown “the best kind of patriotism in understanding the right and the obligation to get vaccinated and protect society as a whole”.
Some 45 per cent of over-70s have already received a booster, with vaccine hesitancy almost zero among the elderly. Cases are starting to rise, however, with the seven-day cumulative rate having doubled in the past week to 62 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, although the situation in hospitals remains under control.
The figure released on Thursday was the first time on record that more foreign travellers have visited Spain in October than in September, demonstrating that people have been waiting for travel to seem safe once more.
“We are still seeing bottled-up demand in some key markets such as Britain,” said a tourism ministry representative speaking to The Daily Telegraph, adding that airlines say that sales for the next three months have reached 90 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
Of the 5.5million arrivals in October, more than 1.1 million came from the UK, with the Canary Islands and the Balearics the most popular destinations. Numbers are still down on 2019, when 7.6million travelled to Spain in what would end up being an all-time record year with just under 84 million arrivals.