Marbella registered in July the highest number of national visitors in the last 12 years, since 2009, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE). Thus, the city closed last month with a total of 79,152 tourists staying in hotel establishments, of which 34,100 were Spanish and a total of 45,052 foreigners. The general director of Tourism in Marbella, Laura de Arce, has highlighted that “the decrease in tourism in these years of pandemic is already moving around 18 percent, compared to 2019, which represents a very important recovery, since in previous months these data oscillated between the 80 percent fall of the month of February 2021 and the 45 percent of the month of June 2021 ”.
As for international tourism, he has indicated that “its recovery is being slower, but its data is also improving with respect to previous months and, above all, the previous year.” “The month of July now represents a 33 percent drop compared to 2019 and an increase of 130% compared to 2020,” he added. In addition, he pointed out that this July, tourism from France continues to rise, as has become customary in recent months, and visitors from the Netherlands. On the other hand, it has specified that “the tourist from Germany has a significant increase, approaching the levels of the year 2019 and it is the British that offers slower recovery symptoms, due to the restrictive measures they have suffered in recent months” .
The degree of occupancy by rooms in July also rose to 66.25%, although still far from occupations in years prior to the pandemic. In this sense, De Arce has highlighted that “as in previous months, the average prices of our hotels have reached the highest point since statistics are available”. Regarding the income per available room (RevPar), “they return to levels of previous years, very close to the one obtained in July 2019, and, in addition, it is the highest in Andalusia”, has valued the general director.