Demand For Holiday Rentals Grows By 25%

20 January 2015 – El Mundo

Requests in inland areas, such as Madrid, recorded an increase of 35%.

Andalucía is the region that accounted for the highest percentage of requests, with 31%.

The analysis reveals that visitors to Spain prefer to holiday in the sun and on the beach.

HomeAway, the online platform for holiday rentals, which has more than one million listings in 190 countries, has published its annual report for 2014. It shows that demand for holiday rentals in Spain increased by 25% with respect to 2013.

According to the analysis, visitors prefer to holiday in the sun and on the beach, although the regions in the North and Centre of the country experienced the highest increases in 2014. Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, the Pais Vasco and Navarra, despite accounting for an average of 2% of requests in 2014, experienced an average growth rate of 60% with respect to 2013. Of those, it was Navarra that experienced the highest increase in demand for holiday rentals, with a rise of 96% on the previous year.

Meanwhile, requests in inland regions, such as Madrid grew by 35%, and Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y Leon recorded increases in requests of 127% and 105%, respectively, becoming the regions with the highest increases in demand in 2014. For their part, Extremadura and Aragón recorded increases of 86% and 83%, respectively, to also place them amongst the leading regions by number of requests.

The autonomous regions of Andalucía, Cataluña, Valencia, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands accounted for 80% of total demand during 2014, and Andalucía was the region that recorded the greatest percentage of all requests (31%). Of these traditionally popular regions, the Balearic Islands led the increase in requests, up 41% compared with 2013, followed by Valencia (19%).

France (40%), the UK (19%) and Italy (13%) are the three European countries that accounted for the majority of the demand for holiday rentals in Spain, together accounting for more than 70%.

In terms of the percentage growth with respect to 2013, the most notable increases in the number of requests came from Portugal (77%), followed by Italy (32%) and beyond the European continent, the United States (27%). Despite being two of the main markets from which tourists to Spain originate, demand from the French and British for holiday rentals increased by just 4% and 3%, respectively. The number of holiday rental requests from the Swiss also increased by 3%, placing Northern Europe as the new focus of interest from which visitors come to our country.

Meanwhile, Germany, which continues to be one of the top five countries for requests, accounting for 19% of requests in 2014, grew by 9% compared to 2013.

Original story: El Mundo

Translation: Carmel Drake