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Foreign tourism in Alicante rebounds strongly to pre-pandemic levels
More than a million and a half visitors descended on Alicante province in July and August, the vast majority British
Travel experts were sure the summer of 2023 was going to be a strong one for Alicante province but as the latest figures show, the rebound in foreign tourism has exceeded even the most optimistic forecasts, surpassing even pre-pandemic 2019.
The August data released this week by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) confirm that 1,525,318 international holidaymakers descended on the province between July and August alone, compared to the 1,508,060 visitors welcomed in 2019.
In 2020, at the worst moments of the health crisis and with huge restrictions on international travel, the numbers fell to barely a third of those of the previous year, and in 2021 there was only a slight improvement, with fewer than 800,000 visitors between July and August. Last year, however, the gradual recovery became evident, with a global count of 1,266,391 tourists in those two months.
This impressive rebound means that Alicante was the fourth most visited province in Spain during August. Far out in the lead was the ever-popular Balearic Islands, which welcomed a whopping 2,201,001 tourists, followed by Barcelona (1,069,519) and Girona (821,544).
In turn, Alicante just narrowly surpassed Malaga, which saw 804,174 foreign visitors.
It should come as absolutely no surprise that the vast majority of visitors from abroad came from the UK; in fact, 254,164 Britons were welcomed in Alicante province in July and 245,567 in August, followed by the French.
In both cases there have been significant increases compared to 2022, of 14.17% and 10.52%, respectively.
Slightly fewer German tourists landed this August compared to 2019, but there has been a dramatic upswing in particular in the number of holidaymakers arriving from Belgium and the Netherlands.
The other unsurprising news is that most visitors flocked to Alicante’s coasts and while Benidorm certainly doesn’t need figures to prove it’s the region’s tourist capital, the numbers do corroborate this fact: 123,687 visitors arrived in August of this year and 129,102 in July, compared to 118,546 and 125,726 in the same months of 2019.
Pre-pandemic levels have also been exceeded in Torrevieja and Alicante, while the likes of Orihuela, Calpe and Denia have fallen just short.
In other news: Small earthquake recorded off the coast of Alicante
Image: Archive
staff.inc.ali
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