French tourists outnumber Brits for first time, but will the trend continue?

HOLIDAYMAKERS' typical profile in Spain has changed since the start of the pandemic: French visitors have outnumbered British tourists in the past 18 months for the first time in history.

In fact, entries from France have doubled those from the UK: Between March 2020 and now, approximately 6.2 million French nationals have taken their holidays in Spain, compared with 3.1 million Brits.

Since the start of the Covid crisis, one in five of Spain's 25 million foreign visitors has been French, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

Although some pockets of the country, such as the Costa del Sol, reported international tourism figures this August as being nearly back to those of 2019 – the last 'non-Covid' year and one which broke all records – nationwide, about half as many foreign holidaymakers as August 2019 visited Spain in August 2021, or around 5.2 million.

British government's relaxed travel restrictions may reboot market

The trend may soon start to reverse, given that, for the first time since spring 2020, the UK government has removed restrictions on entry to the country for travellers from Spain, either residents there visiting Britain or British residents returning from a Spanish holiday, as long as they are vaccinated - no quarantine is now necessary for fully-immunised people not travelling from a 'red-list country' and, for England at least, only one test is required, which can be a cheaper lateral-flow (LFT), rather than the previously-stipulated three compulsory PCRs.

Even without having to quarantine, taking a PCR test 72 hours before arrival, two days after arrival, and a third on day eight – not including any PCRs required for entry to the other country, such as Spain - involves additional organisation headaches and inflates the cost of a trip to Europe by an average of between €350 and €690 per person, which is prohibitive for a family unit or those seeking a budget break.

Now these requirements have been replaced with one compulsory LFT, costing around €40 a head, on the second day after arrival in England, and with the only other stipulation being a passenger locator form completed for both directions – plus a 'Covid vaccine certificate', which is a permanent document that can be stored on a mobile phone or in paper format inside a passport – it means the UK's October half-term week may bring forth an influx of British tourists, and their numbers may rise next year over the spring and summer.

But while the restrictions were in place, the predominant nationality among international holidaymakers in Spain was French, and 20% of foreign visitor spending - €1.18 billion out of a total of €5.9bn – came out of French people's purses.

Why French people?

Some of the reason for this is geography – air travel rules and limitations during the pandemic did not have to apply to many visitors from France, since the majority, according to the INE, entered Spain by car; six in 10, in fact, compared with approximately four in 10 who travelled by plane and just 1.3% by train, the latter of whom probably did not stay much farther south than about Barcelona, given the limited options for long-distance rail travel along the coasts.

Their typical destinations were no more than a day's drive from the French border – about 32% headed for Catalunya, just over 22% to the Comunidad Valenciana, and 15% to the Balearic Islands.

French tourists in Spain have not necessarily risen in number, only in proportion to other nationalities – in total, visitors from the neighbouring country are still down by around 36% on figures from 2019, a slightly smaller decline than those from Germany (down 40%), but considerably less hard-hit than the British market, with 67% fewer than in pre-Covid years, or only one UK holidaymaker for every three welcomed in 2019 and previously.

Brexit or Covid?

Tourism market analysts in Spain are now investigating to what extent the decline in British tourists relates to the pandemic and how much to Brexit, given that the 'transition period', during which the UK was still, in practical terms, an 'acting' EU member, ended only a few short weeks before Covid-19 hit Europe.

The fact that the two hurdles came more or less together means that the impact of Brexit on UK tourism in Spain and other EU nations may not become completely clear for another year or two.

Deputy chairman of the Faculty of Tourism at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), Bartomeu Deyá, says: “From the start, the Brexit issue caused a loss in spending power for the British due to the devaluation of the pound sterling, and in the months before the pandemic, a reduction in British nationals in the Eurozone was seen precisely as a result of these shrinking finances.

“Right now, determining what part of their decline is due to Brexit and what part to the pandemic is complex.”

If the pandemic is the key issue, it is hoped the reduction will be a temporary one, since, as Deyá says: “British people are still keen to travel, but with much reduced air connection possibilities [for package holidaymakers]...the much-reduced activity of tour operators such as TUI and Jet2Holidays, which traditionally brought a huge number of British nationals on trips to Spain, has had a significant impact.”

This is not necessarily the case for holiday home owners, though, or people renting an apartment or villa for a week or two under their own steam, given that scheduled low-cost flights from the UK are more widely available and to a greater variety of destinations than charter flights serving package holiday customers, and have been throughout 2021.

“British tourists are very price-sensitive; not like the German market, which tends to stay loyal to a specific part of the world they know and enjoy. UK visitors, when prices rise, shop around for cheaper destinations,” Deyá explains.

“But the advantage for Spain with UK tourists is the comfort-zone factor: Once they try a destination and like it, they tend to stick to it as long as prices remain stable.

“French tourists have always been here, and the market has survived because of geographical proximity. Although we've never had the proportion of them before that we've had since the start of the pandemic.

“The French, though, are less 'repetitive' than the British and, to a larger extent, the Germans; we don't know yet whether we'll manage to keep them loyal to Spain and returning year after year,” Deyá concludes.