Without knowing the official data that will be published by the National Statistics Institute (INE) the first week of February, the government calculates a 1.2% increase in the arrival of foreign visitors in 2019, to 84 million tourists, and 2.9% of spending. In other words, tourism continues to grow, despite the ghosts of the downturn and the worst omens of the sector. Of course, some changes are beginning to be seen with the increase in arrivals from visitors to distant markets, such as Asia or the United States, and the fall of traditional markets, such as Germany or the United Kingdom.
This advance corresponds to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, who formalized two days before the start of the Fitur tourist fair which could already be intuited with the figures for December: ‘habemus’ a new brand. According to his department’s calculations, in 2019, 83.7 million foreigners arrived in Spain and 92,337 million euros were spent.