British tourists undaunted by terror attacks

21 April 2004

MADRID – The number of British tourists spending their holidays in Spain in March rose by nearly 8 percent compared with the year before, the tourism ministry said Wednesday.

British tourists make up the biggest single nationality visiting Spain.

But the number of Germans fell by five percent, according to the report.

The Spanish Tourism Ministry said overall the 11 March terrorist attacks “did not have any repercussion in terms of the numbers of  tourists in Spain”.

The first three months of 2004 showed a 10 percent rise in the number of Britons with almost 2.7 million arriving in Spain – compared with the first quarter in 2003.

The ministry said this was due to low-cost airlines, whose passengers made up 38 percent of the tourist market – a 50 percent rise on last year.

Nearly 1.7 million Germans came to Spain in the same period – the same amount as the year before. There were also 880,000 French tourists.

Almost one million Britons visited Spain in March – or 30 percent of the total.

There were 705,000 Germans (21 percent) and 303,000 French people (9 percent).

The number of French tourists also fell during March by 18.5 percent compared with the same period in 2003.

But the popularity of Spain was mixed for other nationalities.

The number of Belgians rose by 7.3 percent and Portuguese by 21 percent. But figures for Italian visitors showed a fall by 0.7 percent, the Dutch by 15 percent and the Swiss by 13.4 percent.

However, the number of  Americans rose by 21 percent during March compared with the year before.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news