Hospic expects that the hotel occupancy figures for September in the Valencian Community will be very similar to those of last year, and in some cases will even exceed them. The president of the Valencian Tourist Board, Fede Fuster, stated that traveller bookings make it possible to predict that tourist destinations in the provinces of Alicante and Castellón could be higher than those in 2023, and that Valencian bookings are rechecking the percentage of occupancy they reached in the same month last year.
“We now have an average employment rate for September in the province of Alicante of around 81%,” Foster said, noting that in 2023 the figure will finally be around 90% of employment in the southern regions. A threshold that the Hospic president expects to equal or slightly exceed. “There is still time to sell the remaining stock,” Foster said.
As for the province of Castillo, around 76% of hotel places are already booked, a figure that could grow, according to Foster, above the 83% occupancy recorded in 2023. The employer’s expectations for the province of Valencia are, however, somewhat less enthusiastic, as the percentage of reservations is still around fifteen percentage points lower than the number of guests reached last September, with around 71% and 72% of reservations compared to around 86% of occupancy recorded in 2023.
The employers’ optimism for September comes after two summer months with good figures for the sector, although slightly lower than those for the same season in 2023. Recruitment was particularly high in hotels and apartments located in the typical sun and beach destinations. During the August bridge, the most touristic of the year. The occupancy rate in Calpe, Benidorm, Gandia and Peñíscola exceeded 93% in that period, according to data provided by Hospic. This brought the figures in the first half of August to almost 90% in the case of the province of Alicante.
In July, Hospic also celebrated that the three provinces exceeded 80% occupancy this year, together, with Valencia at the forefront, exceeding 90%, thanks to the popularity of destinations such as Gandia, where hotels cleaned 95% of occupancy rooms.
During that month in particular, the figures for overnight stays in hotels, apartments and country houses place the Valencian Community as the third favourite destination for Spanish tourists, with 13% of domestic visitors. This is the figure taken from the hotel occupancy survey published on Friday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), which sets the total number of stays in Valencian destinations in July at 3.6 million: 1,957,281 tourists resident in Spain and 1,684,895 foreigners.
Good numbers despite changes in the hotel sector
Hospic understands that its data reveals that between the beginning of July and the first half of August, a slight decline “of no more than two points” in hotel occupancy compared to last year has been observed. The data “is not worrying” for the employer, because – they emphasize – “it reflects the long-term view that the levels in January so far maintain the average of the previous year in the same period, and in some cases increase it”. In addition, it must be remembered that the record numbers of 2023 have already placed Spain in an unprecedented scenario in terms of foreign tourism income.
In practice, the reduction in seasonality, which, along with the search for quality tourism, has become a battleground for employers and the state, may explain why peak-season employment figures are not seeing a significant increase. For Hosbeck, the slight decline during July and August reflects the increasingly popular trend for tourists to plan their holidays in other months of the year. “The trend towards quieter experiences, the search for more affordable prices, avoiding the heat, enjoying tourism products linked to nature, and the rise of digital nomads and remote working have led to these new habits among tourists,” they say.
Another factor that can determine tourists’ decision to book accommodation on less popular dates is the general increase in prices in this sector. According to the National Institute of Statistics, hotels in Valencia in July became 6.72% more expensive compared to the same period in 2023. With an average price per room of 140.5 euros, tourists have to pay 40% more than in 2019 for accommodation during the pandemic. high season.
At the same time, the rapid growth in the construction of tourist apartments, which already reached 60,000 in the Valencian Community in February, has led to an increase in the tourist supply that competes to absorb the demand that is also expanding. The figure provided by the National Housing Institute places the Valencian Community as the region with the largest number of registered homes of this type, surpassed only by Andalusia.
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