Record 41.8% drop in hotel occupancy in Costa Brava over summer

Costa Brava hotels registered what the head of the Costa Brava Tourism Board Miquel Noguer has described as a "record low" number of overnight stays this summer with 41.8% fewer reservations in July and August.

Over those summer months, only 39.8% of available hotel beds were booked, far fewer than the 65.2% the year prior, prompting Noguer to call this year "the worst summer" in Costa Brava tourism history. 

"These aren't good figures, quite the contrary, we thought this summer would be a lot better than the last," Noguer stated. "And yes, this year we beat records, but for all-time lows, not highs."

Meanwhile, hotels in the eastern Pyrenees region near Girona only experienced a 27% decrease in reservations over the same period, with the sector attributing this to last-minute bookings by visitors from other parts of Catalonia opting for rural getaways. 

In fact, 57.5% of all visitors in both areas were from other parts of Catalonia, accounting for 3,263,000 overnight stays, up from the 2,425,000 last summer.

The number of tourists from other countries, including Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, or Russia, however, dropped significantly, while there was only a slight decrease in the number of visitors from France.

Tourism down in Catalonia

2020 has proven to be a bad year for tourism in Catalonia as a whole, as only 436,742 tourists traveled to Catalonia in July, down 81.6% compared to July 2019 according to figures released by the Spanish Statistics Institute.

This, in turn, has led to an increase in unemployment over the summer as many jobs traditionally rely on visitors from abroad.