The Valencian Community has been the chosen destination of 3.7 million international passengers in 2021, 11% of the total arrivals into Spain.
By airports, Alicante-Elche was fifth in terms of volume of passengers with 7.2%, according to data released this Wednesday by Turespaña.
In total, Spain received 34,074,904 passengers from international airports, which is 65.5% more than the previous year, but a drop of 63.9% compared to 2019.
The international passenger traffic of low-cost companies, with a weight of 54.7%, registered a year-on-year growth of 64.2% in 2021 compared to last year, while traditional companies, with the remaining 45.3%, had an advance of 67% compared to 2020. 64.8% of total passengers came from the European Union, experiencing an increase of 82.2% over 2020, while the flow from the rest of the world, which accounted for the remaining 35.2%, grew by 41.6 % Over the previous year.
In December, the volume of arrivals from international airports reached 3.9 million passengers in 2021, 35.7% less than in 2021, a year marked by restrictions due to the omicron variant. 53.3% of these chose low-cost companies to travel in the last month of the year, with a decrease of 37.7% compared to the pre-pandemic level, while those who travelled with traditional companies, fell 33.3% compared to two years ago.
According to data from Turespaña, in terms of the decrease in international passengers that has been registered in 2021 in the main issuing countries compared to the same month in 2019, the Netherlands is the country with the lowest drop (46.5%) and the United Kingdom the with the greatest decrease, with 77.7%. Specifically, Germany generated 18.5% of passenger arrivals arriving in Spain in December, reaching 6.3 million travellers, that is, 56.4% less than the same month of 2019.
The second country issuing international passengers to Spain was the United Kingdom, with 4.9 million travellers in 2021 whose priority destination was the Balearic and Canary Islands. It was followed by France (3.4 million passengers), Italy (2.9 million), the Netherlands (2.3 million), Belgium (1.5 million), Switzerland (1.5 million), Portugal (945,150), Denmark (761,943), Sweden (693,325) and Ireland (675,117).
