Between January and September, more than two million tourists arrived in Lanzarote, and as usual, the British market accounted for almost half of those arrivals, specifically 942,171 people. The United Kingdom shows a strong recovery and is approaching 2019 figures, when it had exceeded one million arrivals in the same period.
Many other foreign markets are showing signs of recovery in terms of the number of arrivals to the island, for example France or the Nordic countries, which are very close in arrivals to the 2019 data. In addition, Italy and the Netherlands even exceed the figures of that year. However, the German market, which has traditionally been the second foreign market in terms of tourist arrivals to Lanzarote, is not recovering and with 180,941 arrivals until September, it is 36% less than in the same pre-pandemic period.
In fact, arrivals from Germany have been surpassed by arrivals from Ireland, which, despite experiencing a drop of 22.5% compared to 2019, leaves behind its historic third place in number of arrivals to Lanzarote. Until September, 192,752 Irish people arrived on the island, with a much higher recovery than that of the Germans. And the strong economic growth in Ireland in recent years contrasts with the meager performance of the German economy, which is also suffering more from the energy crisis.
Between January and April, the arrival of German citizens was much higher than the arrival of citizens from Ireland, however between May and September the opposite was true, as many more arrivals of Irish tourists were recorded. We will have to wait for the data for the third quarter of the year to see if this trend ends up consolidating, or if, on the contrary, the German check for their retirees to spend the winter in warm places reverses the situation.
The other change in trend has been the greater weight of national tourism which, so far this year, occupies second place in the overall number of arrivals to Lanzarote, with a total of 498,923 people arriving from national airports until September.