Spain remains the favourite destination for Spaniards, but emerging international destinations in national demand, such as Albania, are moving up in the Spanish summer preferences, which vary depending on the chosen destination, as noted by global travel intelligence platform Mabrian.
Most Spaniards plan their summer vacations at short notice, to domestic or short-haul destinations, either to enjoy local culture and beaches if they stay in Spain; or to explore heritage, cultural experiences and gastronomy when they choose international destinations. These are the main conclusions of Summer 2024: How do Spaniards travel?, a profiling on outbound Spanish summer demand, developed by our team.
For this report, a cross-analysis was carried out, combining the consolidated summer demand data in 2023 (June to September), together with the air capacity, searches, and demand data between December 2023 and the end of June 2024, for trips to be completed from June to August 2024. The objective is to understand current demand, based on structural and cyclical demand trends for the Spanish outbound market during summer.
Five trends of Spanish summer outbound tourism
Trend #1: Summer, better closer to home
The most visited destinations by Spaniards in summer are Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, Morocco, the United States, and Albania. More than two thirds of Spaniards travel within Spain during summer, whereas the rest choose international destinations. Short-haul foreign destinations remain strong, such as Portugal, Italy, Morocco or Greece -with a combined sun & beach and culture value proposition; as emerging destinations such as Albania move up in preferences. The United States also stands out as the only long-haul destination in the Spanish travellers’ top 10 choices.
Trend #2: Travelling within Spain or abroad: how our motivations vary
Cultural heritage (37%) and gastronomy (12%) are the main reasons for choosing an international summer destination for almost half of Spaniards. Sun & beach is the most important reason for 13% of Spaniards who travel locally, although enjoying cultural experiences is the main driver of domestic demand, for more than a third of Spaniards (34% of the total).
Trend #3: Fair weather and safety, a relevant factor in choosing a destination
As shown by our data, the Perception of Security Index for both Spain and the Spaniard’s five favourite international destinations in summer range between 73 and 82 points (out of 100 possible), being Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom the safest, as per Spanish travellers’ perception.
Enjoying a pleasant, not extreme climate conditions is also a factor that weighs on the choices of Spanish travellers for summer. The top five preferred summer international destinations by Spanish travellers feature a Perception of Climate Index that varies between 86 and 93 points, out of 100 possible. This is 11 points higher than the perception that Spaniards have of their own summer climate conditions, which reaches 77.1 points, out of 100 possible.
Trend #4: Increasing air capacity to favourite and to other long-distance destinations
The destinations that will increase direct flights the most, connecting Spain during summer season (based on the airlines’ schedule), are the United States (+5%), China (+7%), India (+8%), Japan (+7%), domestic flights (+8%), United Kingdom (+5%), Italy (+11%), Germany (+6%), Turkey (+4%) and Brazil (+3%). When analysing the top 20, air capacity increases to other long-haul destinations such as South Korea (+8%), United Arab Emirates (+9%), Thailand (+14%), and Saudi Arabia (+13%).
Trend #5: More planning, but Spaniards wait for “last minute deals”
Airline searches for summer 2024 show a mixed trend: Spaniards began planning their summer vacations 86.8 days in advance (almost three months) for travel to international destinations, and 77 days (two and a half months) in advance for domestic destinations, as per the date of the analysis. “In any case, we should wait and see how searches evolve during July and August for this summer, since Spanish travellers do not usually plan their holidays too far in advance; in fact, as our data indicates, one in four Spaniards book their summer holidays less than a month in advance,” explains Carlos Cendra, Partner and Director of Marketing and Communication at Mabrian.
Noteworthy, the cross-analysis was performed over the Spanish summer demand based on flight searches to their preferred choices, ranging from December 2023 to June 2024, to travel between May and August 2024; which implies that data still do not reflect the traditional last-minute demand of Spanish outbound market.
