Fierce controversy Capital tourism

TOURISM returned to positive figures in March in the city of Madrid, as reflected in the data from the National Institute of Statistics published on April 24. Tourists increased by 21.5 per cent compared to the same period in 2022, reaching a total of 819,000 travellers, of whom more than half were foreigners.

This represents an increase in international travellers of 43.3 per cent compared to 2022.

In the accumulated calculation of the 12 months, the total number of travellers in the city was 9.1 million last year, which means an interannual increase of 55.8 per cent. In this same period, the growth of travellers throughout Spain was 48.6 per cent.

As for overnight stays in hotels, in March they grew by 15.2 per cent and totalled 1.6 million.

In this case, 60 per cent of the total corresponds to overnight stays by foreign travellers, whose increase was 30 per cent.

The recovery of overnight stays in Madrid is now just eight points from 2019 when historic figures for tourism were recorded in the city and in Spain as a whole.