Mass tourism in Spain: What do the numbers reveal?

Spain is on track to record its highest ever number of international tourists. The Spanish tourism sector has reported that the number of foreign visitors rose 13% in the first six months of the year, and Spain expected to record 95 million visitors in 2024, breaking last year’s record of 85.1 million.

“There will be a new record. We anticipate an increase of between 5% and 7%. If this second forecast is met, Spain will no doubt exceed the 90 million international tourists mark,” says Natalia Bayona, the executive director of U.N. Tourism.

But not everyone is welcoming the news. Spain — one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world — has seen a growing number of protests against mass tourism. Like other countries where overtourism is a problem, it is struggling to balance the economic opportunity provided by the sector — tourism revenue has doubled in the past 10 years — with the well-being of the local community.

It is not a new phenomenon, nor is it unique to Spain, but it has become a major issue in the wake of the tourism industry’s post-pandemic recovery. The first protests against mass tourism took place in April in Spain’s Canary Islands, before spreading to Málaga, the Balearic Islands and Barcelona, as well as other popular tourist spots.

The protests, however, have done little to dampen tourists’ interest in Spain, with the number of foreign travelers continuing to rise.

From January to May, 33.2 million foreign tourists arrived in Spain. And Spanish Tourism Minister Jordi Hereu estimates that 41 million more will arrive between June and September: a total of 74.2 million foreign tourists in nine months.

This is a jump of 11.5% compared to 2023, with 7.7 million more visitors projected to arrive in Spain in this nine-month period. If the last quarter also sees an 11.5% rise, close to 95 million foreign tourists will have visited Spain by the end of 2024. This is the projection made by experts such as Miguel Cardoso, chief economist for Spain at BBVA Research.

This will strengthen Spain’s position as a leading tourism destination. Before the pandemic, it had overtaken the U.S., becoming the second most visited country in the world, behind only France. Indeed, a recent analysis by Google and Deloitte, with projections up to 2040, projects that Spain will soon overtake France. But how many tourists can Spain accommodate?

“The carrying capacity [of an environment] is a concept which measures the maximum number of people that a destination can accommodate. For Spain, it has not been calculated, but it would be interesting to know what it is,” says Ricard Santomà, vice-dean of the IQS School of Management, at Ramon Llull University. “If we only look at arrivals and spending, we are going in the wrong direction.”

Santomà warns that Spain is at risk of becoming a victim of its own success, a threat that has already materialized in some parts of the country. “There are destinations where the number of inhabitants increases tenfold in summer, but the same does not happen with public services such as healthcare, which end up under much greater pressure,” he explains.

The issue has sparked protest in hotspots such as the Balearic Islands, which receives around 18 million visitors a year, but is home to just over one million residents. But the Hotel Business Federation of Mallorca believes that tourism is not the only factor behind residents’ grievances.

The federation points out that the population of the Balearic Islands has risen notably in the past 20 years, increasing from 821,820 people to 1.15 million. “It is the equivalent of another city, Palma,” it says, in reference to the capital of Mallorca.

In a report, to which this newspaper has had access, the Hotel Business Federation of Mallorca discusses the “housing emergency” caused by tourist rentals, which has made it near impossible for residents to find affordable homes to rent. But it states that eight out of 10 jobs in the Spanish region are supported by tourism, and claims that efforts to attract visitors outside the peak summer months is generating a more stable economic and labor flow.

Economic pillar

There is no doubt about the tourism’s economic impact. More than half of Spain’s GDP growth up to June is due to external demand, the section that includes tourism. “In the first quarter, exports of tourism services grew by 19%,” explains Judith Arnal, Principal Researcher at CEPS and the Elcano Royal Institute, “and there is still room for growth.”

Daniel Fuentes, professor of Economics at the University of Alcalá and director of Kreab Research, believes the Spanish tourism industry is “a success story,” but warns that vacation rentals are putting pressure on the residential housing market and on general inflation.

In fact, the sector is expected to make a smaller contribution to growth next year due to factors such as rising prices. “It is normal for tourism’s contribution to slow down, because we cannot expect to continue seeing revenue growth rates above 20%,” says Ángel Talavera, chief economist for Europe at Oxford Economics.

The Spanish tourism industry began in the 1960s, when the Franco dictatorship opened up to the outside world and sold the country as a cheap destination with good weather, delicious food and miles of coastline. The sector now accounts for more than 10% of GDP and has helped the Spanish economy in difficult moments, such as after the 2008 crisis.

The challenge, stresses Juan Ignacio Pulido, professor of Economics at the University of Jaén and an expert in tourism, is to manage it in accordance with current needs: “Until now, the goal has been on attracting tourists and public policies have focused on promotion. There has been no management of the destinations.” It’s a global problem: none of the world’s most popular tourist destinations — from Venice and Barcelona to Amsterdam and New York — has found the formula to address mass tourism.

“We are facing a new paradigm,” adds Pulido, who believes in a two-pronged approach: creating a tourism industry that improves the quality of life of residents, for example by giving back the revenue from tourist taxes, and attracting sustainable tourists rather than those with greater spending capacity. “We have to go from letting ourselves be bought to selling ourselves, and choosing who to buy. The objective cannot be more tourists, but better ones,” he concludes.

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