2014 was a spectacular year for the Tourism industry on the Costa del Sol with more than 10 million visitors choosing the popular destination for their holidays.
The exact visitor figure is a whopping 10,194,000 tourists, a 7.3% rise from 2013 which saw 9.3 million visitors, and confirms the steady rise of Malaga’s Coast as a top tourist destination. You just have to look back to 2004, where the figure was 8.5 million visitors, to see that the Costa del Sol’s tourism industry is experiencing impressive growth; long may it last!
All these tourists have had a profound economic impact on the region bringing in 7.1 billion Euros in direct income – money spent by visitors on transport, accommodation, food, shopping, car hire, leisure and cultural activities. If you take into account the indirect income generated, that figure increases to a staggering 10.8 billion Euros!
Another encouraging figure is the 132,000 full time jobs created by all this tourist activity (According to the Sopde, the provincial government’s Society of Development and Planning).
So where did these 10 million visitors stay?
Well, here’s the breakdown by accommodation type:
- 4,532,878 visitors chose to stay in hotels.
- 1,011,934 visitors stayed in other types of accommodation (apartments, rural lodgings, campsites).
These figures translated into a substantial increase in overnight stays with 17,399,190 in hotels (5% increase on last year) and 6,127,304 in non-hotel accommodation (14.28% more than in 2013).
Impressive figures which we certainly hope will be equalled or – even better – surpassed in 2015!
Source: Sur in English
