In Spain, tourism contributes 11.6% to the economy

23-12-23

In 2022, the year of recovery after the pandemic, tourism increased its weight in the Spanish economy by 3.9% compared to 2021, to 11.6% of gross domestic product (GDP), which is one point less than in 2019 (12.6%), while employment rebounded five tenths, to 9.3% of the country's total.

The contribution of tourism activity to GDP was also below the figures for 2017 and 2018, at 12.1% and 12.2%, respectively, but exceeded the weight it had in 2016 (11.3%), as well as in the pandemic years, when it fell to 6% in 2020, recovering slightly in the following year, to 7.7%.

The weight of GDP associated with the sector, measured through final tourism demand, reached 155,946 million euros in 2022, compared to 94,127.5 million the previous year, according to the Tourism Satellite Account (CSTE) released this Friday by the National Statistics Institute (INE).

The component with the greatest weight in domestic tourism consumption in 2022 was inbound spending, with 54.1% of the total. That is, 13.2 points more than in the previous year, while final demand associated with the sector increased by 58.6% in terms of volume.

Inbound tourism expenditure reached 84.4 billion euros last year, more than double the 38.5 billion recorded in 2021 and 2.1% more than in 2019 before the pandemic, while outbound stood at 23.7 billion, 66% higher than in the previous year.

For its part, employment in the economic branches characteristic of tourism came close to 1.96 million jobs, which accounted for 9.3% of the total labor market of the economy, five tenths more than in 2021 and the same percentage as in 2020, when Covid-19 broke out, and more than three points below the best exercises which were 2018 (12.8%) and 2019 (12.7%).