Barcelona was popular across a broad spectrum of European tourists in 2019. According to the results of a survey by flights and hotels portal Jetcost, Barcelona topped the list among French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian tourists.
Announced to coincide with the 40th edition of the Fitur tourism fair in Madrid, the survey also ranked Barcelona second among Germans (behind Palma de Mallorca) and Dutch (following Málagá), and fourth in the popularity stakes for British travellers (after Alicante, Málaga and Tenerife).
The city’s consolidation as a major global tourism hotspot was further highlighted in figures released by Aena for 2019 air traffic at Spain’s airports.
Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport closed 2019 with 52,686,314 passengers, five per cent more than in 2018. Of these, the majority (52,636,852) were on commercial flights. The number of passengers on international commercial flights rose by 5.4% (38,630,785 users) and the national total increased by 4.2% (14,006,067).
In terms of operations, 344,558 aircraft movements were registered in 2019, 2.7% more than the previous year. Commercial operations represented a total of 341,896 flights, also 2.7% up on 2018. These comprised 246,520 international landings and take-offs (up 2.9%) and 95,376 national flights (a rise of 2.1%).
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Record Air Traffic in Spain in 2019
A record total of 275,237,810 passengers were registered at Spanish airports in the Aena network in 2019. This was 4.4% more than the previous year, and included 188.8 million travelling on international flights (3.5% more than in 2018) and 85.5 million on national routes (up 6.4%).
Leading the way was Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas Airport (61.7 million passengers), followed by Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat (52.6 million), Palma de Mallorca (29.7 million), Málaga-Costa del Sol (19.8 million) and Alicante-Elche (just over 15 million).
The total number of operations at Aena airports was 2,360,957 in 2019, which represented 2.6% more than the previous year. Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas (426,376) was the busiest airport, ahead of Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat (344,558), Palma de Mallorca (217,218), Málaga-Costa del Sol (144,920), Gran Canaria (126,452) and Alicante-Elche (101,408).