After an exceptional 2023 for tourism in Spain, with record levels of international arrivals, spending, overnight stays and domestic tourism, the figures for 2024 are exceeding expectations and marking the best start to the year in the sector’s history. CaixaBank Research forecasts that tourism GDP will grow by 5% in 2024 (more than double the rate expected for the economy as a whole), with over 90 million visits by international tourists.

The Spanish real estate market accelerated in 2024, especially in the second half of the year, largely thanks to the fall in interest rates. This was added to a series of factors that are keeping housing demand very dynamic, including significant migration flows, rapid job creation and strong foreign demand. On the other hand, the supply of new housing is beginning to awaken, but it remains insufficient to address the high demand. This mismatch between strong demand and scarce supply is driving up house prices – a trend that we expect to continue in 2025.

The Spanish agrifood sector has begun to recover after two years of decline, thanks to the moderation of production costs and the easing of the drought. However, the effects of both of these shocks still persist and the sector continues to face major challenges that are limiting its structural growth capacity.

Investment in the commercial real estate market fell sharply in 2023 as a result of the rise in interest rates. However, as 2024 progresses we can expect to see a revival in transactions, thanks to the anticipated fall in interest rates and an improvement in the fundamentals that determine the behaviour of the different segments. On the one hand, greater buoyancy in consumption will support the retail segment and the continued penetration of e-commerce will continue to require investments in the logistics segment. On the other hand, housing will consolidate its position as the segment attracting the most investment, and the hotel sector will continue to improve thanks to the strength of tourism in Spain. Finally, offices will continue to adapt to the new demands in terms of sustainability and the new forms of work that emerged after the pandemic.

Our Sectoral Indicator reflects a widespread improvement across the various sectors in 2024, particularly in some branches of manufacturing, such as the chemicals, pharmaceutical and paper industries, which have benefited from lower energy costs and an improvement in exports. By contrast, the automotive sector has slowed sharply over the course of this year, following the recovery experienced in 2023.

In 2024, tourism GDP experienced another year of significant growth, with an estimated increase of 6% in real terms, roughly doubling that of the economy as a whole. This performance was driven by a sharp rise in the number of foreign tourists and their average spending, thanks to a recovery of British and long-haul tourism. On the other hand, Spanish tourists are now travelling abroad again, resuming pre-pandemic levels. In this favourable context, the hotel sector continues to enjoy very strong demand, which has allowed it to continue to raise its occupancy levels and its profitability to new highs. Looking ahead in 2025, Spain’s tourism sector will grow at a slightly more moderate rate, although it still has significant support factors to continue expanding and we expect it to remain one of the main growth drivers of the economy as a whole.

The combination of rapid population growth and the gradual decline in interest rates, coupled with the lack of supply, is driving up home prices, particularly in the new housing market and in the most buoyant regions, as well as in those that are most popular with tourists.

Activity in Spain’s agrifood sector is increasing at a faster rate than across the economy as a whole and the outlook for the 2024-2025 campaign is encouraging. Exports are holding up well in the adverse environment of recent years and the food price rally has begun to slow, although the cumulative increase since 2019 remains significant.

The full recovery of international tourism spending in Spain hides major changes in the structure of demand by region of origin. Using data on payments made with foreign cards on CaixaBank POS terminals, duly aggregated and anonymised, we see that Western Europe remains the main issuer of tourists, and that North America and Latin America significantly increased their share of foreign spending. In contrast, the recovery of tourism from the Middle East and Asia and Oceania has been more disparate, affected by geopolitical and economic factors. Overall, a stable but robust growth outlook for 2024-2025 indicates that international tourism in Spain will remain in good shape.

Based on an anonymised analysis of internal CaixaBank data, we perform an in-depth study of recent patterns in spending on catering in Spain. 

We identify the macroeconomic factors that affect the evolution of international tourism in Spain, including income growth in the source countries, inflation, geopolitical risk and exchange rates, and we estimate how many international tourists will visit Spain in 2024.

The food price rally has begun to slow, but the cumulative increase since 2019 is significant and expenditure on food now represents a higher percentage of Spanish households’ consumption. The decline in agricultural and energy commodity prices in the international markets relative to their peaks reached in 2022 should help to contain agricultural production costs and thus to further ease the inflationary pressures on food over the coming quarters.

The strong growth of the tourism sector in recent years, together with new consumer habits following the pandemic, has led to an extraordinary recovery of the Spanish restaurant sector, both in terms of job creation and turnover. It has also gained considerable international recognition and prestige, while at the same time playing a fundamental role in our country as a promoter of social and territorial cohesion.

Spain’s automotive sector is trying to find its place in the new global ecosystem, having overcome the adverse environment of recent years, marked by the international supply problems affecting essential inputs such as microchips and semiconductors, as well as increases in prices and interest rates.

The outlook for the Spanish economy and its sectors is positive. We expect to see a higher growth rate in sectors linked to the digital transition, such as ICT and professional services, as well as in sectors where the Spanish economy is highly competitive, such as the pharmaceutical and tourism sectors.

El gasto turístico procedente de EE. UU. evidencia una marcada desaceleración desde finales de 2024. Esta ralentización refleja, en parte, la normalización del crecimiento del turismo tras la pandemia y factores macroeconómicos como la apreciación del euro frente al dólar y el deterioro de las perspectivas de crecimiento de la economía estadounidense. Sin embargo, dado que estos factores suelen operar con cierto rezago, es probable que la ralentización responda también a un aumento de la incertidumbre en torno a la política económica y comercial de EE. UU. que estaría comenzando a afectar a la propensión de los estadounidenses a viajar a España. Teniendo en cuenta que es un mercado que en 2024 representó el 4,6% de las llegadas y el 7,1% del gasto turístico internacional en España, su desaceleración puede llegar a restar cerca de 1 p. p. al crecimiento del PIB turístico en 2025. Algunas zonas del país, como las áreas urbanas no costeras, podrían verse más afectadas por el elevado peso del gasto turístico estadounidense. Por el momento, la mayor desaceleración se está observando en las zonas rurales, donde el peso del turista americano es menor.

House prices and the number of sales have surged since mid-last year in Spain, although there are significant geographical differences. In 2024, house prices grew more vigorously in the most expensive areas, thus widening the price gap between municipalities and regions, and this is causing some of the demand to begin to shift towards more affordable areas. At the provincial level, temperature could be a relevant factor: sales are growing more rapidly in the cooler regions of the Northwest of the peninsula, while the traditional tourist areas are experiencing a more gradual increase in demand. In addition, the sharp rise in house prices in the major cities is causing a shift in housing demand towards more affordable peripheral areas, where house prices are expected to experience rapid growth in 2025.

Spain’s real estate market slowed in 2023, but more gently than anticipated. Despite the sharp rise in interest rates, several factors have supported the sector, including a resilient labour market, significant immigration flows, the imbalance between the short supply of new housing and the high demand, and the improvement in household finances. On the supply side, the stabilisation of construction costs has allowed 2023 to end with a similar number of new home construction permits to that of previous years. In the first half of 2024, we expect this gentle slowdown to continue, as interest rates remain high and the economic environment continues to show signs of relative weakness; however, in the second half, as the downward path of interest rates takes hold and economic activity gains traction, we expect the real estate market to regain more vigour.

Spain’s manufacturing has been relatively successful in overcoming the impact of the various exogenous shocks that have shaken the European economic scenario in recent years.

In 2023, Spain’s tourism sector remained on the path of recovery and growth, surpassing initial expectations and breaking records, not only in nominal expenditure but also in real terms. In 2024, we expect the positive trend for Spain’s tourism sector to continue and its GDP to increase by 2.5%, with the sector outpacing the overall economy and remaining one of the drivers of the Spanish economy.