The Minister of Tourism and Foreign Affairs of Andalusia, Arturo Bernal, assured this Friday that the airline Air China “has the figures” to offer a direct connection with Andalusia. The approach envisaged by the company is to offer three flights a week all year round to Shanghai and Beijing. This was confirmed by Bernal in an interview on Canal Sur Radio collected by Europa Press. In this interview, the councilor Arturo Bernal insisted that it will be the airline that “You will have to decide which airport interests you the most”mentioning the interest and previous work carried out in the Asian market by the municipalities of Seville, Malaga and Granada.
“Air China has already consolidated its connections with Madrid and Barcelona and so it is clear and everyone in Spain sees it. He knows that the third option must already be Andalusia. Here we put the choice of the community on a platter to the company, argued the Minister of Tourism, who stressed that the Chinese tourist is the profile that “interests us”, since he spends an average of ten days and with expenses greater than 280 euros per person per day.
Regarding the increase in prices in coastal areas this summer, Arturo Bernal stressed that “we have observed that the higher the quality, the higher the price. We are able to attract a different client and it is also important to value it from this point of view because this client sympathizes much better, is more compatible with the local communities. We are perhaps beginning to observe fewer situations of saturation or nuisance from neighbors.because the tourists who visit us are more and more sensitive and do not come in large numbers.”
Asked about the movement of national tourists to the cooler areas of northern Spain to the detriment of the Andalusian coast, especially Malaga, the councilor considered it “hasty” to conclude from the data for the month of July that there is a “trend” in this sense. . “What we are observing is the trend that, with the arrival of more international tourists,and there was a price increase and that the national tourist is looking for more affordable destinations.”
Better data than in 2023
Andalusia received a total of 1,461,773 international tourists during the month of July, which represents an increase of 8.68% compared to the same month of the previous year.with an expenditure of 2,033.87 million, 10.3% more, according to the latest data published by the National Institute of Statistics (INE). This is the best figure for international tourist arrivals and the best in terms of expenditure for the month of July in the region of the historical series.
On average, Each tourist visiting the community spent 169 euros per day in July, 1.94% more than the same month of the previous year, and stayed 8.23 days in Andalusia. In total, the average expenditure per person amounted to 1,391 euros, 1.49% more than in July of the previous year. Since the beginning of this year until July, 7,733,415 tourists visited Andalusia (+12.97%) and spent 10,306.32 million euros in the region (+22.53%).
As regards the measures taken in Rome and Barcelona – in the latter a seven euro tax for cruise passengers who stop in Barcelona – the Andalusian mayor described these solutions as “improvisations” and “populism”. “Wanting to export the situation experienced in Venice, for example, to Seville, Malaga, Granada and Cordoba, among which are usually cited as hypersaturated cities, seems irresponsible to me.”
