Spain sees slowdown in US tourists due to weak dollar and Trump’s policies

The United States, the largest source market for tourists to Spain outside the European Union, is beginning to show signs of weakness, and this could reduce tourism GDP growth by a percentage point in 2025. However, this metric is still expected to grow by 2.7% annually, exceeding the growth forecast for the Spanish economy as a whole.

This is the main conclusion of the latest tourism sector report by Caixabank Research, which anticipates that the accelerated growth of international tourism to Spain will slow down, including visitors from the U.S. “The appreciation of the euro against the dollar, the slowdown of the U.S. economy, and an increase in political and economic uncertainty appear to be behind this change in trend,” the report underscores, pointing to November 2024 (when Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris at the polls) as the turning point for the shift from a trend of explosive growth to a less vigorous one.

“Passenger arrivals from the U.S. slowed abruptly, going from 17.5% year-on-year growth in the first 10 months of 2024 to just 2.3% between November 2024 and May 2025,” says the report, which also highlights the sudden collapse in spending through payments made using the entity’s POS terminals. “Spending with U.S. cards, which was growing at rates close to 17% year-on-year between January and October 2024, began to slow markedly starting in November, with an average drop of 2.2% year-on-year on average from November 2024 to May 2025.”

In 2024, U.S. tourist arrivals peaked at 4.26 million, representing 4.5% of total arrivals, while spending reached €9.1 billion, representing 7.1% of total spending.

The analysis also attempts to identify which destinations have been most affected by this sudden slowdown in American tourism. “If we segment Spanish municipalities into urban (more than 30,000 inhabitants) and rural, and between coastal and non-coastal, we observe that the influence of American tourism is particularly significant in non-coastal urban municipalities (14.7%), around Barcelona and Madrid, according to the latest analysis by Turespaña. In rural municipalities, both coastal and non-coastal, the influence of American tourism is slightly above 4%.”

In rural destinations, where U.S. tourism is less important, year-on-year declines in American tourist spending between November 2024 and April 2025 are close to 10%. However, in coastal urban destinations the decline is more modest (–5.4%), and in non-coastal urban destinations, where U.S. tourism is more important, they registered a very slight increase (+0.1%).”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition