Spanish tourism has made a strong start to 2023. International tourist arrivals have returned to the levels of 2019 while records have been broken by international tourism expenditure. Domestic tourism has been growing since 2022 but with less momentum due to a combination of reduced purchasing power and greater outbound travel. Although tourism is currently one of the drivers of the Spanish economy, several headwinds are likely to appear in the coming quarters. The complicated macroeconomic outlook in the countries of origin of inbound tourists, the reactivation of more distant destinations for European and Spanish tourists, and competition from more economical destinations point to a slowdown in Spain’s tourism industry as we approach 2024.
Search results
The resilience of the Spanish economy in recent years has been underpinned by both quantitative (strong job creation) and qualitative (more stable employment) improvements in the labour market. Firstly, there has been a fall in temporary employment, a factor that has traditionally fuelled job insecurity and social inequalities and held back investment in human capital, constraining the economy's growth potential; secondly, in some key sectors of our economy this has been accompanied by an improvement in productivity. However, the incipient improvement in overall productivity that has been observed is not widespread across all sectors.
The tightening of financial conditions between 2022 and 2023 truncated the rally in home prices in the vast majority of residential markets of the major advanced economies. Despite significant differences between countries, overall home prices have withstood the tightening of financial conditions relatively well, taking into account the speed and intensity of the interest rate hikes. This better-than-expected resilience not only shows the strength of the demand for housing, but also reveals the scarcity of supply at this point in the cycle. Regulatory restrictions to increasing supply and a lack of public investment in the vast majority of OECD countries will be exacerbating the housing affordability problems in markets that are experiencing higher demand, such as large cities.
The inflationary episode currently being experienced by the Spanish economy is due to a major shock in costs. While the focus has been on the rise in prices for energy and agricultural commodities, since mid-2021 a large number of key raw materials and intermediate goods used in a wide range of production processes have also become considerably more expensive. This article shows how the higher price of these products has affected manufacturers’ operating costs, forcing them to pass on part of this increase to their customers so as not to jeopardise their economic viability.
Investment is a key determinant of long-term economic growth, due to both its direct contribution to aggregate demand and its impact on competitiveness and productivity. In recent years, business investment in Spain has shown significant divergence by sector and region, as well as a notable change in its composition, with a growing prominence of intangible assets (R&D, software, intellectual property, etc.), especially in advanced services and larger companies. This highlights the central role of digitalisation in transforming the productive base of Spain’s economy and in narrowing the gap with the most innovative countries.
The rapid recovery in air travel during the summer months caught the air transport sector with insufficient manpower to cope with the growth in passengers. According to our analysis, this has led to severe airport saturation problems in a large part of Europe, primarily in outbound countries, acting as a brake on tourism’s recovery in Europe.
2020 was a tough year for the tourism industry. All the data that became available at year-end show that the impact of the pandemic on the sector has been devastating. After a total standstill during the months of March, April and May 2020, tourism demand failed to pick up appreciably during the rest of the year, even during the summer months when the infection rate seemed to be under control. Moreover, the waves of COVID-19 occurring at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021, together with the various measures to restrict movement and businesses, have kept tourist numbers at a minimum, aggravating the losses suffered by the sector.
Spain has experienced a sustained increase in business entrepreneurship in recent years, reaching its highest level since 2012. However, business creation remains below the European average and significant structural challenges persist: a high early failure rate among new businesses, a strong geographical concentration of entrepreneurship and a limited focus on high value-added sectors. Despite these weaknesses, encouraging signs are emerging in sectors linked to digitalisation and the Economy 4.0. The major challenge lies in harnessing this dynamism to ensure that more projects survive, consolidate, and are directed towards higher-productivity sectors, so that all this can translate into more solid, balanced, and lasting economic growth.
Rural destinations have emerged as the most attractive choice after the outbreak of the pandemic. Rural areas were a great alternative in the summer for those tourists wanting to travel whilst still maintaining a social distance. As a result, the loss of tourism business in the less urban regions of Spain has been much lower than in more traditional coastal destinations and cities. This article has applied big data techniques to analyse the trends in card payments made by both domestic and international tourists according to the characteristics of the destinations they visited. The results confirm the increased resilience of rural tourism destinations in 2020, suggesting a positive outlook for rural tourism in 2021.
The sector has seen a slowdown in 2019 as the economic outlook has deteriorated. In 2020 the trend will still be positive although the rate of growth will ease.
The pandemic has inevitably brought about major changes in our consumption habits. Faced with the impossibility of going to a store in person, online shopping channels have gained a lot of share in 2020. According to an analysis of CaixaBank’s internal data, this growth has not only been significant but also widespread among companies of different sizes and sectors, and has encouraged many of them to use e-commerce as a sales channel for the very first time.
The wine sector plays a fundamental role in Spain, not only in economic terms due to its contribution to activity, employment and exports but also because of how extensively vines are grown and its regional importance, making it a driving force for environmental conservation and rural development. Spain is the world’s second largest exporter of wine in volume and third in value, although in recent years we have seen greater penetration in North America and Asia, markets that tend to buy wine of higher value. After the COVID-19 crisis, wineries and cooperatives must tackle important medium-term challenges and adapt to the new consumption habits of a younger, more digital and environmentally aware public. This strategy includes a commitment to organic farming, online sales and wine tourism.
House prices have risen sharply since the middle of last year but the trend is very uneven across different municipalities and regions. One factor contributing to this geographical heterogeneity is the recovery in foreign demand: house prices in the most tourist-oriented municipalities are growing more vigorously than in non-tourist areas. CaixaBank Research’s house price forecast models, based on big data and machine learning techniques, point to a moderate slowdown in house prices over the coming quarters.
Air passenger transport is one of the mainstays of the tourism sector's value chain. For this reason, and in a similar way to the rest of the sector, it experienced a huge slump in 2020 in the wake of COVID-19. Airlines are currently having to tackle a combination of high capital costs due to their large structures and an almost total lack of operating income. The evident need for liquidity among Europe's airlines has led some governments to inject public capital to prevent their collapse. However, 2021 looks like being the watershed the tourism sector needs: the progress made by the vaccination roll-outs and the approval of measures such as the health passport will be crucial for air passenger transport to embark on the road to recovery and return to being one of the mainstays of tourism.
CaixaBank Research has developed new models for forecasting house prices at the level of province using large amounts of information (big data) and applying machine learning techniques. According to these models, house prices will fall in 7 out of 10 Spanish provinces in 2021 and grow only very moderately in the rest. Comparing current forecasts with those projected by the models before the pandemic, a notable correction can be seen in the expected growth of house prices in one year’s time, approximately 4 pp on average. This correction has been more pronounced in provinces with a higher urban concentration and greater dependence on foreign tourism, although they are still the most dynamic in spite of this.
The retail sector plays a very important role in an eminently service-based economy such as Spain’s, with a larger share compared to other European economies in terms of activity, jobs and number of firms. It is an atomised sector with a considerable number of SMEs and micro-SMEs and is particularly labour-intensive. Moreover, its presence is widespread throughout the length and breadth of our country. All this gives it a certain cohesive role, both from a social and territorial point of view, within the Spanish economy.
Spain’s housing market ended 2025 with exceptionally high levels of activity, exceeding 714,000 transactions, the highest figure since 2007. The strength of demand – driven by population growth, improved purchasing power and favourable financial conditions – sustained high activity, particularly in the first half of the year. However, on the supply side, significant limitations persist: despite the increase in permits, the construction of new homes remains insufficient to keep up with new household creation. This imbalance between supply and demand is exerting significant upward pressure on prices, which are accelerating across the board, particularly in the most dynamic and touristic areas. Looking ahead to 2026-2027, transactions are expected to stabilise at high levels and there will be a gradual improvement in supply, although it will remain insufficient. As such, prices will continue to rise, albeit at a more moderate rate.
Luxury tourism has established itself as a strategic segment for the Spanish tourism sector, both for its high contribution to expenditure and for its potential to increase the value added of the sector. According to payment data analysed by CaixaBank Research, although this segment only represents 3% of international cards, it accounts for 20% of in-person spending by foreign tourists. The analysis also highlights the rise of urban luxury tourism, driven largely by Madrid’s dynamism as a high-end destination, despite luxury tourism still maintaining a strong coastal orientation. The United Kingdom, France and Germany are the main sources of tourists travelling to Spain, both in the luxury and conventional segments, although other economies with a very high GDP per capita, great inequality or a combination of both stand out.
The restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus and caution due to the prevailing uncertainty led to a large increase in savings by Spanish households in 2020. Specifically, we estimate that cumulative savings from the pandemic reached €46.6 billion, 3.7% of 2019’s GDP. This sharp increase in savings has diminished as we have been able to return to our old habits, leading to a rapid recovery in consumption; a trend that will most likely continue in the coming quarters.
In recent years, rural tourism has become increasingly important in Spain, opening up new avenues to diversify the sources of income for rural economies. In this article, based on internal CaixaBank data, we look at the upturn in the sector after the COVID-19 pandemic and its implications for the economic resilience of rural Spain and for the tourism industry, given its high level of sustainability both from the point of view of its impact on the environment and its greater geographic diversification and more limited seasonality compared to other, more traditional forms of tourism such as sun, sea and sand destinations.