The Costa Blanca doubles the number of beds in tourist apartments on the Costa del Sol. With such an offer, 91,158 beds in the province of Alicante, some 45,000 in Malaga, it is not surprising that the popular Alicante tourist demarcation tops the list in June peninsular ranking of stays in tourist apartments, with a total of 803,204 (513,478 were foreigners and 289,726, Spaniards).
As no one will be surprised, Benidorm is the locomotive that pulls the train, and it does so contradicting the trend towards a certain stagnation, a decline in national terms, that the sector seems to be experiencing.
The capital of the Marina Baixa hosted 247,760 overnight stays in apartments in June, some 50,000 more than in the same month of 2022. Two-thirds of the “guests” to these non-hotel establishments came from outside Spain, with a great predominance of the British. However, the data provided yesterday by the National Institute of Statistics show a significant decline in the State as a whole.
Overnight stays in tourist apartments decreased by 5.2% in June compared to the same month of 2022. Those of residents decreased by 13.9% and those of non-residents by 0.3%. The average stay decreased by 2.1%, standing at 4.8 overnight stays per traveller. 35.1% of the places offered are occupied, 8.1% less than in the same month of 2022. And the degree of occupancy by places on weekends stands at 38.6%, with a decrease of 9.9%
At first glance, the behavior of Valencian destinations, especially in the province of Alicante, indicates that this slowdown has not occurred in the autonomous community, but if we look at the specific data for each destination, we discover that, if the trend of June, we may be reaching a saturation point, at least in the case of large cities.
Both Valencia and Alicante have increased their supply in the last year, but demand, according to official data, has begun to fall. Specifically, the capital of Turia registered 72,370 nights of accommodation in tourist apartments in June, while a year ago it reached 78,790.
The decrease is mainly due to national travelers, who have gone from staying overnight on 32,000 occasions to less than 20,000, while international clients have risen, from 46,000 nights on June 22 to 52,490 this year. As in the country as a whole, the average stay has been reduced significantly, since this year it was 2.77 days while in June 2022 it was 3.27.
The decrease in overnight stays has been even more pronounced in the city of Alicante, despite the fact that the average stay per traveler has increased a bit, since it was 3.26 days in June 2022 and has been 3.50 this year . But the decrease in stays by foreigners, which totaled 30,485 overnight stays a year ago compared to 27,260 last June, and even more by nationals, just 14,066 for the 20,949 overnight stays in the sixth month of 2022, have caused a decrease of more than 20%.
The survey published by the INE also shows a disparate behavior in the different Valencian destinations, because while some have notably increased overnight stays in homes, such as Torrevieja, which went from 59,000 in June 22 to more than 72,000 this year, or Dénia , which increases the number of stays from 35,000 to 50,000, there are other towns with a significant market share that have lost weight. Specifically, Calp, one of the municipalities with the largest non-hotel offer, added 148,000 overnight stays in June, but last year it exceeded 190,000. Or Xàbia, which has gone from 43,000 in 2022 to 36,000 this year.
