In the third quarter of 2023, nearly three million people found work in Spain’s tourism industry. Turespana, the Spanish tourism body, released data showing that this number is 6.5% higher than it was during the same time last year.

Compared with the same quarter the previous year, 180,604 more people were employed in tourism-related activities between July and September 2023.

During this quarter, the autonomous regions with the highest number of employees were the Canary Islands (267,801), Valencian Community (297,481), Madrid (424,390), and Catalonia (513,831).

The unemployment rate for this quarter was 8.1%, which is less than what was reported in 2022 and 0.4 percent less than what was recorded in the second quarter of the year.

Comparatively speaking, the growth in the third quarter was mostly concentrated among employees as compared to the second quarter of 2023. Long-term contract holders and salaried workers also increased in number. Nonetheless, compared to the same time last year, fewer people were self-employed or had temporary contracts than before.

According to Gomez, the increase in permanent contract workers represents a critical turning point in the development of the Spanish travel and tourism sector.

The major tourism sectors experienced growth during this time as well, with the following percentages showing growth in addition to the increase in employment:

There was a 7.7 percent growth in the hospitality industry.

Services related to food and drink increased by 7.9 percent.

Services for lodging reported a percentage increase.

The passenger transport sector saw a noteworthy 10.9 percent increase.

Overall, there was a noticeable increase in Spanish tourism. According to recent data from the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE), there were two million more overnight stays by tourists in Spain in September 2023 than there were in the same month the previous year.

Concurrently, the Spanish Ministry of Tourism revealed that 73.2 million foreign visitors came to Spain from January to September of 2023.

Turespana predicts that tourism spending in Spain will break the record set in 2019 in 2023. These figures also highlight Spain’s superior ranking over Germany and France as the UK’s most favoured European travel destination.