Up to February, Spain received 6.5 million foreign tourists, which represents an increase of 4.5% over the same month in 2014. This increase marks a new high in the records of the Frontier Tourist Movement Survey (Frontur) released by the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism.
In February, a total of 3.28 million international tourists visited the country. This is 5.3% more than in the same month in 2014, according to the survey conducted by the Office of the Deputy Director General of Knowledge and Tourism Studies in the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism. February witnessed a 20.5% increase in entries from Italy as well as Switzerland (+ 13.5%) and the USA (+ 12.3%).
All major source markets experienced growth in the first two months of the year, with the largest increases being for Italy (+ 20.4%), United States (+ 18.7%), Switzerland (+ 9.4%), Belgium ( + 8.6%) and Portugal (+ 8.3%).
From January to February, the UK, the main source market for tourist visitors to Spain, recorded growth of 2.7%, reaching 1.2 million visitors and representing 18.9% of total inflows. It was followed by France which comprised 15.7% of total arrivals and grew by 2.1% to over one million visitors. Germany ranked third as the source country for tourists with 972,455 visitors in the first two months of 2015, representing a 3.4% increase and 15.1% of total inflows to Spain.
In the other markets, Italy, with 399,966 tourists, increased the number of tourists visiting Spain by 20.4%, representing 6.2% of the total. Inflows from the rest of Europe as a whole increased by 16.5%, amounting to a total of 351,106 tourists and 5.4% of all arrivals.
The survey shows 121,313 tourist arrivals from the United States, an increase of 18.7% and 1.9% of total visitors to Spain. In contrast, with 706,025 arrivals, the number of visitors from Scandinavia fell by 6.1%, despite being the fourth source market and comprising 10.9% of foreign tourist inflows to Spain.
Russia provided Spain with 20.2% fewer visitors (80,136 tourists) in the first two months of the year, while the Netherlands recorded a decline of 3.3% with 242,694 tourists. For the rest of America, the number of visitors also fell by 4.3% to 249,061 visitors.