INE: Foreigners Account For 82% Of Overnight Stays In 5-Star Hotels

29 August 2017 – El Economista

Foreigners who visited Spain in July registered more than 1.9 million overnight stays in five-star hotels, representing 82% of the total number of nights sold in the most luxurious category of hotel accommodation.

According to data extracted by Servimedia from the Tourist Hotel Environment Survey from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), five-star hotels recorded the highest percentage of clients from overseas, exceeding the average for hotel accommodation as a whole, where foreign clients accounted for 67.2% of all rooms, by 15 percentage points.

In fact, 6.5% of the overnight stays by foreigners in Spanish hotels were registered in five-star hotels, a percentage that more than doubles the 2.8% recorded by domestic clients in high-end establishments.

Meanwhile, four-star hotels registered more activity in Spain by both overseas and domestic tourists. The presence of foreign clients amounted to 69.3%, with 14.6 million overnight stays, compared to 6.4 million overnight stays by domestic visitors.

This figure of overnight stays in four-star hotels accounted for 49.7% of all stays registered by overseas tourists in the country, compared to a percentage of 45.2% in the case of domestic tourists.

If we add together the overnight stays registered in the two highest categories, we see that 56.3% of the foreigners that visited Spain in July slept in four and five-star hotels, whilst in the case of Spaniards, that percentage amounted to 48.1%.

After four star hotels, the accommodation most used by foreigners and by local tourists alike were three-star hotels, which hosted 33.2% of overseas tourists and 28.8% of domestic visitors.

Specifically, international tourists registered 9.7 million overnight stays in three-star hotels in July, accounting for 70.2% of the total in that category, compared to 4.1 million domestic overnight stays.

In the remaining categories, 1.4 million overnight stays or 4.7% of the total number of stays by foreigners were in two-star hotels; 0.4 million or 1.5% were in 1-star hotels; 0.5 million or 1.9% were in three- and two-star hostels; and 0.6 million or 2.1% in one-star hostels.

Of these four categories, domestic clients accounted for a higher percentage of total stays than foreigners in the lowest three, whilst overseas tourists accounted for 52.2% of overnight stays in two-star hotels. Specifically, domestic clients accounted for 54.3% of stays in one-star hotels, 58% in three- and two-star hostels and 50.7% in one-star hostels.

Original story: El Economista

Translation: Carmel Drake