Costa del Sol has now earned itself the title of leading coastal destination for hotel stays. This emergence beat other usually popular destinations like Mallorca, Costa Blanca and Tenerife. Just last April, four months into the year of 2024, Malaga had welcomed around 1.7 million visitors. The surge was not instant nor was it consistent since it fell down last March. However, the month of April was enough to welcome a crazy amount of tourists.
Turismo Costa del Sol’s Hotel Business Bulletin states that this southern region has seen more prominent growth in the field of overnight stays. Right after Mallorca, Costa del Sol is now the second fastest growing coastal destination in Spain. Only within the first four months of this year, recorded overnight stays in Costa del Sol exceeds over five million. When we compare last year to this year, the amount of overnight stays went up by 13.3%. You might think that this boast has to be attributed to the Easter holiday, which is not completely untrue. However, even without the Easter holiday, Costa del Sol had a strong international visitors presence.
Declining local tourism in Costa del Sol
On the other hand, the amount of Spanish visitors in this province has been slightly declining. Meaning that the improvement of the region’s tourism is highly thanks to international tourists. Those international tourists are mainly from France, Germany or the UK. The increase in British visitors is up to 18% while the German ones is up to 9.1%. France had a lower surge of 8.3% but still a significant impact in the total improvement. Furthermore, although Poland and Ireland are not among the top 3, Poland still saw a surge of 64.9% visitors from last year. Ireland has a surge of 48.5% while Finland has 26.9%, all compared to last year.
Beside from tourism, hotels have seen lots of improvement in their profitability as well. Average room rate have now surged to 98 euros per night which is a 3.6% increase. Surprisingly enough, length of stay has also increased to 3 days. This all mean that Costa del Sol has been succeeding in showing off its allure to attract visitors. Keep in mind that such a positive growth is so beneficial for the jobseekers as it helped the hotel employment rate to rise by 2.3%.