The spending of tourists in Barcelona was 9.6 billion in 2023, 14.7% more

The Barcelona Tourism Observatory points out that tourist spending in 2023 was 9.6 billion euros, 14.7% more than in 2019. More than 12 million people visited Barcelona last year, 6.9% less than in 2019, according to the monthly analysis by the Department of Studies of the Economy and Economic Promotion Management of the City Council.

There were 35.9 million overnight stays, an increase of 1.8%, given that the average stay has gone from 2.7 to 3 nights per person. The hotel occupancy rate on available beds stood at 68.9% for the year as a whole; the rate for tourist apartments was 54.6%, and for hostels it was 66.5%. Hotel profitability averaged around 159 euros, 21.6% above the pre-pandemic year, reports ACN.

80.8% of tourists staying in the city were of international origin, which consolidates Barcelona as a leader in the number of overnight stays made by these tourists throughout Spain. By origin, the United States is the main nationality with more than one million tourists accommodated (+5.3%). Behind are the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany (between 400,000 and 600,000 tourists per country).

Japan and Russia are the countries with the most significant drops (-53.4% and -64.5%, respectively), while China and South Korea also show drops of around 17%, but have recovered slightly in recent months, also as a result of the relaxation of measures adopted to face the Covid-19 pandemic in 2023 compared to 2022.

In 2023, almost 130,000 contracts were signed in the tourism sector as a whole and, for the first time, more than half were permanent. The rate of permanent contracts in this sector had never exceeded 20% until last year. The number of unemployed people in the tourism sector does not reach 7,000 people, the second lowest figure since 2007 and only surpassed by about 200 people the previous year. The core of the sector employs about 100,000 people in the city, a figure that is 3.2% higher than the values of 2019.