Spain's visitor numbers hit new highs as tourists avoid Middle East
From the rooftop terrace of a hotel, Fede Fuster looks out across Benidorm, at the nearby high-rise buildings and the town's famous, sweeping beach. "With
From the rooftop terrace of a hotel, Fede Fuster looks out across Benidorm, at the nearby high-rise buildings and the town's famous, sweeping beach. "With all its virtues and its defects this is a place we feel proud of," he says. "It's a place of opportunities." Fuster is the president of the local tourism association, and his family was one of the first to build a hotel in this Mediterranean city, in the 1950s. Benidorm's population is still only 77,000, but it swells to around five times that number in the height of summer, due to its status as one of Spain's prime tourism draws.
Since the Covid pandemic left resorts like Benidorm virtually deserted and the Spanish tourism industry at a standstill there has been a remarkable recovery. Foreign arrival numbers into the country have broken records each year, and totalled 97 million in 2025. Currently the world's second-biggest tourist destination, just behind France, Spain is expected to consolidate its recent success in 2026. "I think this is going to be a great year," Fuster says. "I'm optimistic, we're talking about reaching 100 million tourists in Spain. If we keep growing like this we're going to be number one [in the world] very soon." Industry experts had originally expected 2026 to see more modest growth.
But the outbreak of the US-Israeli conflict with Iran has made Spain an attractive alternative compared to Middle Eastern holiday destination Dubai, and countries in the eastern Mediterranean, such as Turkey and Cyprus. "In these moments of crisis, of [military] strikes or wars, the bookings always increase," says Fuster, who recalls a similar phenomenon in 2011, during the turmoil of the Arab Spring, although he insists he would prefer to compete with other countries without this advantage. "Any time that you have a crisis in the [eastern] Mediterranean or the Middle East, Spain is seen as a secure place to go," says Francisco Femenia-Serra, a lecturer in geography at Madrid's Complutense University.
He explains that "part of the tourists that would normally go to Turkey or Egypt because of the [low] prices, for instance, might end up in Spain". Spain's official tourist arrival figures appear to bear this out. The country received 9.1 million international visitors, external in April, a new high for the month. This was 5.2% more, or 450,000 additional people, than April 2025. Meanwhile, Dubai International Airport saw its passenger numbers drop by 66%, external in March as flights and bookings were significantly reduced due to the Iranian situation.
The BriefWire