The number of people choosing Spain as a holiday destination will have grown at an unprecedented rate by 2024: by 10 percent. Everything indicates that Spain will break the magical barrier of 100 million foreign visitors in 2025. After thirty years, it is likely it will surpass France as the most popular holiday destination in the world.

In a ‘normal’ year – excluding the corona pandemic and the recovery time afterwards – the 10 percent growth in the number of holidaymakers that Spain reached last year is already very special. But if you express that in money, the numbers are even more impressive: Spaniards earned 126 billion euros from all those visiting foreigners last year, a growth of 17 percent compared to 2023.

Hotel country of camping country

People who are on holiday in ‘hotel country’ Spain spend more per day than holidaymakers in France, a camping country. Holiday country number 3 in the world, the United States, follows in terms of number of holidaymakers at some distance from Spain and France. The development of the last eight years looks like this:

The popularity of the country also has a downside for Spain. This can be seen in the words chosen by the Spanish Minister of Tourism Jordi Hereu. He calls the figures ‘impressive and positive’ and emphasizes that tourism gives 2.6 million Spaniards a job, but it is still a different tone of voice than a year ago. Back then you could still hear him say words like ‘fantastic’.

Fierce protests

Hereu is well aware that the growth of tourism in Spain has become a sensitive issue. Last year there were large weekly protests against ‘overtourism’. The most severe of these were in Barcelona and on the island of Mallorca – which saw a decline in bookings in the second half of 2024.

It was not much, a contraction of less than 1 percent, but hoteliers were shocked. It could be a turning point, they say. They called on angry protesters to moderate their protests. In Palma de Mallorca, people took to the streets almost every week last summer.

For the whole of Spain, that turning point is certainly not there yet. The number of holiday bookings for the first quarter of 2025 is already more than 9 percent higher than it was in the first quarter of 2024.

In that figure, the holiday industry sees another important change: people are increasingly going on holiday in what used to be called ‘the low season’. This is due to the growing group of pensioners, who can go whenever they want, and to climate change. Many people prefer not to go to Spain in July or August, when it can get up to 45 degrees there.

Dutch

Spain keeps track of which countries the holidaymakers come from. The number of Dutch people who spend their holidays in Spain is growing rapidly: now more than 40 percent more than eight years ago. This is clearly visible in the graph below. Within Spain, the Dutch most often choose Catalonia, Valencia and the islands of Ibiza and Mallorca as holiday destinations.

In absolute numbers, of course, more Germans, French and Italians than Dutch people go on holiday to Spain, but in relation to the number of inhabitants, the Netherlands is in second place. Only Brits go even more often.

The number of Dutch tourists into Spain from 2016 -2024