Tourist figures down for January to April

Joan Collins AROUND 1.3 million foreign tourists visited the Balearics in the first four months of the year, some 8.9 percent less than in the same period in 2005, due to a fall of 5 percent in the British tourist market and a 1.1 percent fall in the German tourist market. The number of tourists coming to the whole of Spain during the first four months of 2006 was 14.5 million, some 5.8 percent more than in the same period last year, according to the Tourist Movements across the Frontier Survey from January to April. With regard to tourist spending in this period, the secretary general for Tourism, Raimon Martinez Fraile, said that there was a 10 percent rise in April but only between 1 and 2 percent for the whole of the four months, as in January, February and March tourist spending, compared with the same months last year, had fallen. The definitive figures will be published on May 30. Martinez Fraile highlighted, during the presentation of the Survey, that for the first time in three years the Canary Islands, “had recorded a rise”, and said that during the first four months of 2005 tourism had fallen in the islands by 2.9 percent in comparison with the rise of 2.2 percent recorded this year.