Spain received 2022 more than 80 million international air passengers (80.4 million), recovering 85% of the travellers who arrived in 2019, according to data released by Turespaña.

TDB keeps you informed. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

More than 80 million international passengers.

In December, passengers from international airports reached 5.7 million, which means that 95% of pre-pandemic passengers have recovered.

For the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, these figures show that “2022 has been the year of the recovery of our tourism. We have seen it with the excellent employment figures made public yesterday, with a record number of members in the tourism sector, and we see it today with the arrival of international passengers, which guarantee the strength of the sector and anticipate a record 2023, a year that will also mark the definitive transition towards a quality tourism model”.

Increase in all countries
In the month of December, passengers to Spain increased in all the main countries. The markets that have registered the greatest recovery, compared to pre-pandemic figures, are Ireland, with 140,602 passengers (14.2% more than in 2019), followed by France, with 492,101 passengers (5.8% more) and Portugal, with 216,833 passengers (4.0% more than in the same month of 2019). For the year as a whole, 2.2 million passengers arrived from Ireland, 6.5 million from France and 2.6 million from Portugal.

In terms of volume, the United Kingdom was the leading issuer of passengers in December (1,158,536), representing 20.1% of the total share of arrivals, followed by Germany with 726,697 (12.6% share) and Italy, with 532,877 (9.3%).

The arrival of British passengers (18.5 million in the total year) has had an impact on all the autonomous communities, but especially in the Canary Islands; this community has also benefited from the arrival of German passengers (11.9 million in 2022) while the arrival of Italians (7.1 million in the whole of last year) mainly benefited Madrid and Catalonia.

Catalonia: highest annual growth
Madrid was the region with the highest number of arrivals in December (1.6 million, 29.1% of the total share) and also in 2022 (18.2 million, representing 22.7% of the total number of Autonomous Communities), followed by the Canary Islands (1.3 million in December and 18.2 in 2022) and Catalonia (1.1 million in the last month of the year and 15.8 million in the annual accumulated total).

Of the six main autonomous communities with the most arrivals, Catalonia recorded the highest year-on-year growth (57.8% compared to December 2021). Compared to December 2019, the Canary Islands was the only one to show a recovery in arrivals in this month of December (6.9%).

Of the total number of passengers arriving in Spain by air, 56.2% flew on a low-cost airline, 3% less than in 2019, compared to 43.8% who opted for a traditional airline, 7.5% less than in the pre-pandemic. Although international air passengers are not equivalent to international tourists because they also include residents in Spain returning from an international airport, the vast majority of them are tourists.