Hotels on Costa del Sol: April growth

Hotels on Costa del Sol: April growth

Despite the rainy weather, resort hotels on Costa del Sol demonstrated quite successful figures. Semana Santa or the Holy Week is the Easter eve in Spain, which is also the first marker of the state of the tourism industry before the summer season.

Hotels on Costa del Sol got "good" marks. The average occupancy rate of hotels in such coastal resorts as Torremolinos and Fuengirola was 81%. It is by 5% higher than last year.

The highest occupancy rate has the resort of Marbella. In Marbella tourists booked and occupied 86.5% of the hotel rooms in the city.

Malaga was also a popular tourist destination. Its hotels were filled up to 82.2%. The reason for this, in addition to Easter, is a new air terminal in Malaga, which increased the airport's capacity by almost three times, as well as one of the main cultural events in Malaga - opening of the Thyssen-Bornemis Museum with large collection of paintings by such great Spanish painters as Picasso and Dali.

It is worth noting that the occupancy rate of hotels in other cities in the Malaga province increased by 85.6%.

The average budget of tourists, who come to vacation in Andalusia, is lower because of declining term of stay. At the same time, daily expenditures of tourists increased and are accounted for 59.2 euros per day, according to opinionmalaga.com.

The largest number of tourists in Andalusia is Spanish. They account for 39% of the total number of resorts and cities guests in the region. In 2011 there was an increase of visitors from Madrid. As for the foreign tourists, the first two leaders remain unchanged for decades: Germany and the UK. However, a number of EU countries showed growth: the Netherlands, Belgium and Scandinavia.

Ilya Kalachev

Date: 05/05/2011