Tourists spent 9.6 billion euros in the city of Barcelona in 2023, 14.7% more than in 2019 despite the fact that there were around 12 million tourists staying in hotels, housing for tourist use and hostels (HUT), a 6 .9% less.
Barcelona City Council concludes that the 2023 balance “shows for the first time the possibility” that the economic return and spending of tourists will increase despite the decrease in the number of visitors, it reported this Saturday in a statement.
The Barcelona Tourism Observatory attributes the greatest economic return to the fact that the 12 million tourists have made 35.9 million overnight stays (1.8%) because the average stay has gone from 2.7 to 3 nights per person.
The Deputy Mayor for Economy, Jordi Valls, has stated that this trend must be “deepened, favoring a longer stay for visitors”, linked to cultural, gastronomic, sports, professional or training activities. He has also highlighted that the greater profitability of tourism activity results in an improvement in the quality of employment in the sector.
The hotel occupancy rate of available places was 68.9%, that of the HUTs 54.6% and that of the hostels 66.5%, and the hotel profitability was about 159 euros on average (21. 6% above the pre-pandemic year according to the municipal index of recovery of tourist services).
But the Tourism Observatory calculates a higher economic return: without counting arrival transportation, tourist spending in 2023 totaled 9.6 billion euros, 14.7% more than in 2019 and 26.1% more than in 2022. This is the “highest figure in the historical series” and is also noticeable in the restoration, which closed last year with 56.9% above 2019.
80.8% of tourists staying are of international origin, making Barcelona the “leader” in Spain in the number of overnight stays by foreigners. The most prominent nationality is the United States, with more than 1 million guests (5.3%), followed by the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany, with 400,000-600,000 tourists each; Japan and Russia are the countries with the greatest decreases (-53.4% ??and -64.5%); and China and South Korea fell by over 17% but recovered “slightly” in recent months.
In 2023, almost 130,000 employment contracts were signed in the tourism sector and “for the first time” more than half were permanent. The rate of permanent contracts in this sector “had never exceeded 20% until last year”, also favored by the labor reform.
The number of unemployed in the sector does not reach 7,000 people, “the second lowest figure since 2007 and only surpassed by about 200 people the previous year.” The core of the sector employs around 100,000 people in Barcelona, ??3.2% more than in 2019.
