The number of international tourists arriving at the Canary Islands grew by 626.2% in October compared to the same month in 2020, it went from just 136,896 received during the worst year of the coronavirus pandemic to 994,249, although it still remained below the numbers of the previous year, which were 1,143,663, 9.1% less if compared to 2018, according to data published the Spanish National Statistics Institute.
The foreign tourism number remains 2.3% lower in 2021 than during the same period of 2020 if the period from January to October is counted, reaching a total of 3.342,448 visitors compared to the 3,419,729 people who had visited the destination in 2020, even after their number had then fallen by 68.3% compared to the first ten months of 2019, according to the latest Statistics of Tourist Movements in Frontiers Frontur released by the INE.
The reason is that those numbers include arrivals from January to mid-March of last year when the levels of visitors to the islands had not yet been drastically reduced by the mobility restrictions that were then imposed to contain COVID, which paralyzed the tourist activity.
However, the INE points out that only the Balearic Islands surpassed the Canary Islands among the top holiday destinations for foreigners in Spain in October, accounting for 19.7% of all tourists received in Spain. It was a close call as the Canary Islands accounted for 19.4%.
Non-resident tourists arrived at the Canary Islands in the tenth month of 2021, mostly from the United Kingdom, 325,796 of the tourists were from the UK and 217,680 were from Germany, according to Frontur data.
In terms of expenditure in October, the Canary Islands added up to a total of EUR 1,253 million, 693.2% more than in October of the previous year, which represented 22.4% of the total expenditure in Spain - first place among the Autonomous Regions.
The average expenditure per tourist was 1,260 euros, 9.2% more, at a rate of 151 euros per day (+12.3%) and with an average trip duration of 8.3 days, which represents a decrease of 2.8%.