Last year, the Canary Islands received 13.94 million foreign tourists, thus approaching the sector's historical record of 14.21 million in 2017, after an unprecedented month of December in all statistics, both in number of people and in volume of spending.
According to data from the Survey of Tourist Movements at Borders (Frontur) published this Friday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), 1.37 million travelers from other countries spent a few days on vacation in the Canary Islands in December, which makes that month the best in the entire historical series.
The previous monthly maximum for tourist arrivals to the Canary Islands dates back to March 2018, when the islands accommodated 1.34 million tourists from abroad, in what was until now the second best year of the series, with 13.75 million.
Having recovered from the profound impact of the covid-19 pandemic on its activity, the Canary Islands tourism sector has achieved these figures after a year in which ten of the twelve months closed above one million foreign visitors, all except May and June, which ended with 969,343 and 947,828, respectively.
The sector had not seen anything like this since 2017 and 2018, its two most buoyant years, which only fell below one million tourists in May.
In comparison with 2022, last year ended in the Canary Islands with a growth of 13.1% in the arrival of foreign visitors.
In December, the Canary Islands was also the leading tourist destination in the country: one in four foreign citizens who chose Spain that month for their vacations decided to spend them on the islands.
Specifically, they were 26.4%, ahead of the 19.6% who traveled to Catalonia and the 13.7% who chose the Valencian Community.
Regarding spending, 2023 ends with a double record: tourists from other countries had never spent so much on their trips to the Canary Islands in a single month (2,095.90 million in December) or throughout a full year (20,333.57 million in the accumulated total).
In fact, the final figure for the year is well above the previous maximums, 17.45 and 17.11 million, which dated from 2022 and 2018, although these records are influenced not only by the volume of tourists, but also by the high inflation of recent years.
In December alone, each tourist who traveled to the Canary Islands from another country spent an average of 1,526 euros on those days of vacation, 10.9% more than a year earlier, at a rate of 169 euros per day, 0.4% more. The average length of stay also increased by 10.5%: nine days.
