NIGHTMARE APRIL

PALMA

HOTEL occupancy rates in the Balearics fell by nearly a fifth last month in comparison with April in 2009, confirmed the National Institute of Statistics yesterday.

Tourism results for April have now turned into a nightmare scenario with reports published yesterday in the Majorca Daily Bulletin showing how spending by tourists in the Balearics last month totalled a third less than in April 2009.

Research on tourist hotel trends carried out by the INE revealed that there were 2'139'299 overnight stays made at Balearic hotels last month, 19.2 percent less than the same month last year. Of this total 74.1 percent of overnight stays were made by foreigners.

Even so, said the INE, and despite the fact that there was a year-on-year decline of 12.08 percent of the number of overseas visitors coming to the Islands in April, the Balearics was still the third favourite holiday destination in Spain last month, beaten only by the Canary Islands and Catalonia where occupation percentages were 54.5 and 60.5 respectively. A different picture is given, however, when analysing results for the rest of the country.

Nationally there was a 1 percent increase in hotel occupancy last month compared to April 2009, and there has been a 3.5 percent growth in the number of overnight stays during the first four-month period of this year in comparison with January to April in 2009.

Hotel prices across Spain fell by an average of 3.1 percent in April, although this figure is 0.8 percent higher than prices registered during the same month in 2009. Hotel occupancy for the month stood at 48 percent, similar to last year.

Of the 19.9 million overnight stays in hotels in Spain last month, 4.8 million were made by the Germans and the British. There was however, a year-on-year downturn in the number of Germans of 15 percent and a decline of 2.7 percent of Britons in comparison with April 2009.

There was an increase, meanwhile, in the number of overnight stays by the French and the Italians, by 7.9 and 11.2 percent respectively.