Canary Islands closed the year 2022 with a total of 12.6 million international passengers15.7% of the country’s total, which is 136.2% more than the previous year but still 4.8% less than in 2019, before the pandemic of cobid-19, according to data released this Wednesday by Turespaña.
By airports, Tenerife South leads arrivals on the islands with 4.9 million passengers (-1.4% over 2019), followed by Gran Canariawith 3.2 million (-9.5%); Lanzarotewith almost 2.4 million (-3.6%) and Fuerteventurawhich added 1.9 million passengers (-0.4%).
Traditional companies transported 5.4 million passengers to the archipelago, 18.2% less than before the pandemic, while low-cost companies rose 8.8% to exceed 7.1 million.
Spain received more than 80 million international air passengers (80.4 million) in 2022, recovering 85% of the travelers who arrived in 2019.
In December, passengers from international airports reached 5.7 million, so 95% of pre-pandemic passengers have already recovered.
For the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, these data show that 2022 has been the year of the recovery of tourism in Spain.
“We have seen it with the excellent employment figures made public yesterday, with a record number of affiliates in the tourism sector, and we see it today with the arrival of international passengers, which guarantee the strength of the sector and anticipate a record 2023, a year that It will also mark the definitive transition towards a quality tourism model”, he highlighted.
Specifically, in the last month of the year, passengers to Spain increased in all the main countries. The markets that have registered the greatest recovery, compared to pre-pandemic figures, are: Ireland, with 140,602 travelers (14.2% more than in 2019), followed by France, with 492,101 travelers (5.8% more) and Portugal , with 216,833 passengers (4.0% higher than the same month in 2019).
In the total for the year, respectively, 2.2 million travelers arrived from Ireland, 6.5 million from France and 2.6 million from Portugal.
In volume, the United Kingdom was the first issuer of passengers in December (1,158,536), representing 20.1% of the total share of arrivals, followed by Germany with 726,697 (12.6% of the share) and Italy, with 532,877 (9.3%).
The arrival of British passengers (18.5 million in the total for the year) has had repercussions in all the autonomous communities, but especially in the Canary Islands; this community has also benefited from the arrival of German passengers (11.9 million in Spain in 2022), while the arrival of Italians (7.1 million in all of last year) mainly benefited Madrid and Catalonia.
CATALONIA: HIGHEST ANNUAL GROWTH
According to data from Turespaña, Madrid was the community with the most arrivals in December (1.6 million, 29.1% of the total share) and also in 2022 (18.2 million, representing 22.7% of the total of CCAA), followed by the Canary Islands (1.3 million in December and 18.2 in 2022) and Catalonia (1.1 million in the last month of the year and 15.8 million in the accumulated annual).
Of the six main autonomous communities with the most arrivals, Catalonia was the one that registered the highest year-on-year growth (57.8% compared to December 2021). Compared to December 2019, the Canary Islands is the only one that shows recovery in arrivals this month (6.9%).
Of the total number of passengers arriving in Spain by air, 56.2% flew with a low-cost airline, 3% less than in 2019, compared to 43.8% who opted for a traditional company, 7.5% less than in pre-pandemic.
Although international air passengers are not equivalent to international tourists because they also include residents of Spain who return from an international airport, the vast majority do correspond to tourists.
