The island received 4,3 million tourist clients during fiscal year 2023 and 465.099 in the last month of the year
Tourism The tourism sector of Gran Canaria closed the 2023 financial year with 4,34 million clients, according to data from Frontur, which represents the third year in tourist volume in history. The island's main industry achieves this milestone after closing the month of December as the month with the most tourists received in the history of Gran Canaria: no less than 465.099 tourist clients.
The Minister of Tourism, Carlos Álamo, indicated that the billing data indicates that “we have just closed the best year in our history in terms of income, which is the priority of our expansion policy, although the official data has yet to be released. ", before explaining that the commitment to market diversification, with some nationalities at their historical highs, "has been key to offset the slow recovery of our most important markets in the past such as the German and Nordic markets."
In this sense, the growth of clients of Irish nationality (+42% compared to 2019), Italian (+26,4% compared to 2019), French, British (+22,7%) or Dutch ( +13,6% growth in the last year). Among all, the French presence in the island territory stands out, occupying fifth position in terms of international references, with 158.745 clients, 66% more than in 2019 and 16% more than in 2022. The Germans and Nordics continue to recover sensations and they improve compared to 2022 by 17 percentage points, with the presence of 819.660 and 836.839 clients, respectively, in 2023, but they are still below the arrival volume of 2019.
The data for the month of December 2023, with the arrival of 465.099 tourist clients, is the best in history, with records since 2010, and exceeds the milestone of December 2017, in which 427.447 visitors arrived with a significant presence of clients. derived from the Arab Spring. After this, the best data until this year were those of 2017, 2022 (421.484), 2018 (420.041) and 2019 (416.723 clients).
Meanwhile, the 4.340.676 clients in fiscal year 2023 are only surpassed by the fiscal years of 2017, when 4.587.570 tourists arrived, and that of 2018, with 4.509.827. The volume of customer arrivals was higher in this period due to the diversion of passengers from Arab destinations due to conflicts in their respective countries.
“The sector is in luck. Despite the specific difficulties of nationalities, which are recovered after a couple of years of containment in spending and prudence in the face of the conflict in Ukraine and a possible loss of energy resources, the island's tourism sector is in a great moment, billing like never before, with the hotels practically full and good feelings for the year 2024. In short, we now have, thanks to diversification, a more solid destination and less dependent on specific markets,” concluded the Minister of Tourism, Carlos Álamo.
He stressed that Gran Canaria has obtained the highest year-on-year growth in the Archipelago with an increase of 11,8% compared to 2022, according to data from ISTAC and published by Promotur.
The occupancy rate in December was 84% of the rooms and 70,85% of the beds, almost 10% more than in 2019. Meanwhile, the occupancy rate throughout the year by room was 79,3. 69,3% and by places, 7,84% and represents an increase of 2019% compared to 2023, the highest growth value in the Canary Islands. The average stay in 7,1 was 8,2 days, with foreigners staying an average of XNUMX days.
