The high tourist season in Córdoba capital begins with 5% more visitors thanks to foreign travelersMANUEL MURILLO
Córdoba received more tourists in April of this year than in the same month last year and it was thanks to the visitor from outside Spain. This is highlighted by the data from the Hotel Occupancy Survey published today by theNational Institute of Statistics (INE)and to whom later we will have to add the figures of those who choose other types of accommodation to have the complete x-ray. In the case of the province, they came to Córdoba in April 112,338 tourists who stayed in hotels, which is 2.62% more than in the same month of the previous year, when the data remained at 109,465.
And while foreign tourists rose by nearly 25%, national tourists fell by almost 13%.. At the provincial level, Spanish tourists continue to be the majority, although the distribution with respect to the total remains almost 50%-50%. The same does not happen in the capital, where the presence of foreign tourists in hotels was greater than that of national tourists. In this case, a total of 93,630 people came to Córdoba capital in April, the beginning of the high tourist season, which is 5.21% more than last year.
Of those almost 94,000 visitors staying in hotels, almost 51,000 were foreigners, while the Spanish did not reach 43,000. What’s more, while the number of foreign tourists visiting the capital increased by almost 23% in April, Spanish tourists decreased by almost 10%.
Overnight stays
Overnight stays, however, did not grow at the same rate and what’s more, at the provincial level they decreased despite the increase in tourists.. In the case of the capital, hotel nights increased by just 1.84%, going from 156,229 in April 2023 to 159,100 in April of this year. In the province they fell 1.84%, going from 195,071 in April last year to 191,478 in the same month of this year.
Tourists in the surroundings of the Mosque-Cathedral.
The average length of stay continues to be the great Achilles heel of Cordoba tourism and it drops again even in the month in which the high season of the sector begins. At both the capital and provincial level, the average stay in April remained at 1.7 days, falling 3.41% in the capital and 4.49% in the province when compared to the same period last year.
Same number of hotels and more staff employed
According to the INE, In the capital there were 92 hotels in April, the same as there were a year ago. Of course, they had more employees because in April 2023 there were 925 workers and in April of this year there were 966.
Regarding the occupancy level in the capital, on average in April it stood at 68.56%, slightly more than in April 2023 where it was 67.83%. Weekends worked better with an occupancy that was close to 81%.
