Barcelona continues to break records as it welcomes over 100,000 tourists sleeping in the city each night, forming a temporary city within the city. The month of July saw 1,219,221 visitors who accounted for more than 3.57 million overnight stays. This figure is the highest recorded in the city’s history, surpassing the previous peak of 2019 by 1.1%.
This is according to the latest report from the Barcelona City Council. The accumulated overnight stays from January to July also reached a new high, marking a 4.5% increase compared to the same period last year and a 5% rise over 2019, the pre-pandemic year when tourism records were last broken.
A shift towards longer stays
The statistics, drawn from the Activity Tourism Report based on data from Spain’s National Institute of Statistics (INE), highlight a clear trend that the city’s tourism sector and local government have been advocating: fewer tourists but longer stays. In July, the average stay was 2.9 nights, with the January-to-July average holding steady at 3 nights per visitor. While slightly lower than last year, these figures are still 5.1% higher than in 2019.
This focus on longer stays has allowed Barcelona to maintain a steady influx of tourists while managing the pressures of overtourism. On any given day in July, more than 100,000 tourists were staying in the city’s hotels, tourist apartments, and hostels.
Diverse accommodation choices
Out of the 1.2 million tourists in July, 800,195 stayed in hotels, contributing to 2,132,279 overnight stays. This number is consistent with the previous year. Tourist apartments saw a significant increase, with 328,680 tourists choosing this option—a 23.5% rise from July 2023. These apartments accumulated 1.17 million overnight stays, reflecting a 9.4% increase from last year. Meanwhile, the average stay in these accommodations was 3.6 days, compared to 2.7 days in hotels. Hostels also saw growth, accommodating 90,346 tourists, an 11.4% increase from the previous year.
International tourism dominates
A striking feature of Barcelona’s tourism landscape is the overwhelming presence of international visitors, particularly in hotels where they now constitute 85.4% of guests—a 4.5% increase from last year. In July, the city hosted 683,748 international tourists in its hotels, a figure that, while slightly below July 2019’s numbers, far exceeds the 116,447 domestic visitors. The decline in national tourism was nearly 13% compared to last year.
Shifts in cruise tourism
Barcelona’s cruise tourism also shows interesting trends. From January to June, there was a 13% increase in cruise passengers either embarking or disembarking in Barcelona, while those making brief stops in the city saw a slight 1% decline. This reflects the port’s strategy to prioritise cruises that have Barcelona as their home base, reducing the number of transient stops. In July, the port welcomed 453,184 cruise passengers, slightly fewer than the 467,607 recorded last year. However, overall, cruise passenger numbers for the first half of the year showed a 6% increase.
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