Recently the Tourism Service of Barcelona presented the results of the past year and the perspectives for 2011 for the touristic sector of the city. It pointed out that, after two difficult years, 2010 was a year of revival with more than 7,13 million visitors and 14 million overnight stays. Joan Gaspart, the chairman of the Tourism Service, also announced that the occupation degree of the hotels in Barcelona didn’t rise and stays on 74,75%, this just because the amount of hotel beds in the city increased.

The best news for Barcelona is actually the perspectives. In the months January and February of this year, 900.000 tourists have made a city trip to Barcelona and there were registered 1,7 million overnight stays (that’s an increase of 17% in comparison to 2010). It looks like 2010 is again going to be a touristic record year for Barcelona.

According Joan Gaspart Barcelona is currently on the 4th place in Europe looking at foreign visitors. This despite of the prominent European destinations for city trips like London and Paris (with respectively 14,1 and 7,9 million foreign visitors, against 4,4 million visitors in Barcelona) that also includes the numbers of stays in apartments or in homes of acquaintances, something Barcelona doesn’t do.

For the first time the French were the biggest group of foreign tourists in Barcelona in 2010, followed by the Italians, Americans and Brits, with more than a half million visitors each. There were 567.287 travelers from France (13% more than the year before), which also spend the most. Looking at payment with credit cards they covered 19,4% of the total expenses of the foreign tourists. This means a turnover of 311 million Euros, about 97 Euros a day (without hotel costs). That is for example the double of the turnover realized by the Americans.

Looking at foreign tourists that show the biggest growth, Switzerland is sticking out. In 2010 there were visiting 32%  more Swiss people Barcelona then the year before. Also Scandinavian travelers are notable present, that is 28% more than the year before. Finally, from the rest of Europe there came 1,88% less tourists to Barcelona, in total 1,97 million persons.

In these Economically hard times it isn’t astonishing that the locals see the tourism more and more as an expedient for the crisis. Almost 96% of the inhabitants of the city believe tourism is “more favorable for the city”, which is a record number. In total 55%  believes that tourism is the economic sector which has the most wealth, 84,5% of the locals admits that the touristic sector creates a lot of job vacancies and 82,1 thinks it contributes to the maintenance of the cultural facilities.

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