Spending by foreign visitors fell 4.2% in November to €937m

How much each foreign visitor to Catalonia spent went down by 4.2% in November, compared to 2016, to a total of 937 million euros. According to provisional figures made public on Wednesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), each visitor spent an average of 949 euros during their stay, some 2% less than last year.

The INE’s figures for November show that the Canary Islands was the autonomous region in Spain that was most popular with foreign tourists, accounting for 32.5% of the total, followed by Catalonia with 20.2%, and then Madrid with 13.6%.

Yet, in the first 11 months of 2017, Catalonia was the region in which foreign visitors spent the most, accounting for 22.2% of the total for Spain, followed by the Canary Islands (18.5%) and the Balearic Islands (17.6%). The total amount spent by foreign visitors to Spain in November was 4.6 billion euros, 10% more than last year.

The INE’s provisional figures also show that each foreign visitor to Catalonia spent an average of 186 euros a day, 9% more than in the same month last year. In all, foreign visitors spent 18.2 billion euros in Catalonia in November. However, the average length of stay went down 10%, to an average of 5.1 days for each visitor.

In terms of spending, the country providing the most visitors was the UK, with 17.9% of the total, followed by Germany (13.3%) and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden), with 12%. Spending by tourists from the UK grew by 6.6%, that of German tourists by 16.6%, with 15.1% for Scandinavians.