In the last month of 2020, the Canary Islands were the favourite destination chosen by all travellers and accounted for 60.5% of the overnight stays made by foreign tourists in the whole of Spain. However, the islands have a year-on-year drop of 85% in overnight stays by foreign tourists, due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
All in all, the Canary Islands presented the highest occupancy rates per hotel in December, which averaged at 26.3%, an almost unprecedented low in, what is, the high tourist season, where occupancy is usually close to one hundred percent.
By tourist area, the island of Gran Canaria reached the highest occupancy rate of 29.4%, while El Hierro had the highest weekend occupancy at 32.8%. However, Tenerife had the highest number of overnight stays, with 316,276 which is surprising taking into account that the island entered extra restrictions during December.
Among the tourist spots with the most overnight stays, which were Madrid, Barcelona and Seville, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria registered the highest occupancy rate by places (36.8%) and the highest occupancy rate at weekends (49.3%).
At national level, overnight stays in hotels reached 91.6 million in the year 2020 as a whole, which represented a decrease of 73.3% compared to 2019. Overnight stays by residents fell by 57.6% and by non-residents by 81.7%.
42% of the overnight stays were concentrated between the months of May to September, with a variation of –26.8% compared to the same period in 2019.
The Canary Islands had 7.3% of all overnight stays made in Spain by residents of the country during 2020, the year in which the archipelago was the main destination chosen by non-residents, with 39.9% of the total overnight stays. On the islands as a whole, overnight stays by foreigners fell by 72% last year compared to 2019.
Despite being a year of crisis, framed in the situation of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Canary Islands presented the highest occupancy rate by places in 2020, with an average of 47.8%.
The main tourist areas by number of overnight stays in 2020 were the island of Tenerife (with 7.1 million overnight stays), Gran Canaria (5.7 million) and the Costa del Sol (5.0 million).
And the tourist spots with the most overnight stays were Madrid, Barcelona and San Bartolomé de Tirajana, a municipality in the south of Gran Canaria that also presented the highest average occupancy rate by places (52.7%) and also the highest average occupancy in weekend (55.3%).
