Spain receives 37.5M international tourists in 1st half of 2023

Spain received 37.5 million foreign tourists in the first half of 2023, approaching pre-pandemic levels, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said Wednesday.

The figure is 24% more than the number of tourists in 2022 but still 1.6% less than 2019 levels when 38.2 million visitors traveled to Spain before the coronavirus pandemic.

Spain received 8.3 million visitors in June alone, marking an increase of 11% compared to the same month last year.

The INE said foreign tourist spending increased 14.3%, reaching €46 billion ($50.3 billion).

In the first half of the year, it said, the UK had the highest cumulative spending among all countries, followed by Germany and France, respectively.

Communities that received the highest cumulative spending were the Canary Islands, Catalonia and Andalusia during the same period, it added.