Spain closed 2025 with a record 96.8 million international tourists, a 3.2% rise on the previous year, with overseas visitors spending up 6.8% to €134.7 billion. The headline figures, published by Spain’s National Statistics Institute, confirm the country’s position as one of the world’s most visited destinations.
For hotel investors and operators, though, the more useful read sits beneath the totals. Growth is no longer concentrated in the established resort hubs. As recent reporting on the sector outlook has highlighted, demand is spreading along Spain’s coast, and the regions seeing the fastest shifts are increasingly the ones outside the headline names.
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Where the growth is going
Catalonia remained Spain’s most visited region in 2025 with 20.1 million international arrivals, but growth there was a modest 0.6%. The story for the year was further south and east, with Andalucia recording around 14.5 million international arrivals, up roughly 6% on 2024 and more than 20% above the 2019 benchmark.
The Comunidad Valenciana posted a record 12.4 million international tourists, a 4.3% annual rise, with international visitor spending in the region reaching €16 billion. Government data also points to broader spread: rural and interior destinations recorded visitor growth of around 60% between 2019 and 2025, suggesting that demand is widening well beyond the traditional sun-and-sand cluster.
The figures from Spanish airport operator Aena reinforce the pattern. Madrid-Barajas and Barcelona-El Prat grew 3% and 4.4% respectively in 2025. By contrast, Málaga-Costa del Sol handled 26.8 million passengers (up 7.4%), Alicante-Elche 19.95 million (up 8.5%) and Valencia 11.85 million (up 9.6%). Palma de Mallorca, the bellwether for the Balearics, grew just 1.5%. The mature hubs are close to capacity, while the secondary gateways have room to grow.
Why secondary costas are gaining ground
Three factors explain why these secondary costas are attracting investment.
- Connectivity: Sustained route growth into Málaga, alongside double-digit international growth at Alicante and Valencia, means the airlift required to support hotel demand in secondary destinations is already in place.
- Capacity pressure in primary markets: Marbella recorded the highest hotel ADR of any Spanish destination in August 2025 at €395, with Estepona’s RevPAR reaching €328, according to INE hotel short-term trends data. Those numbers reflect strong pricing power, but they also point to a ceiling on incremental room supply at the top end. New investment increasingly has to look at adjacent markets to find returns at scale.
- Residential demand as a leading indicator: International buyer activity has spread well beyond the headline resorts to encompass Spain’s coastal property markets from the Costa Brava in the north-east through the Costa Dorada, Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol to the Costa de la Luz on the Atlantic. Where international residential demand goes, leisure tourism demand often follows, and the regions attracting second-home and relocation buyers are typically the same regions where mid-scale and resort hotel pipelines are now being planned.
Implications for hotel investment
The operator activity already reported on this site reflects the trend. Travelodge has flagged Spain’s top 20 markets as a target list, citing the under-representation of branded economy and midscale stock at just 6% of national room supply.
IHG Hotels & Resorts signed four properties in 2024 across Mallorca, Jerez, Gandia and San Sebastián, taking its open and signed Spanish room count to nearly 13,000. Stoneweg Hospitality has built a portfolio of seven repositioned hotels in Spain since 2021. The common thread is a willingness to look at locations a tier below the trophy assets in Madrid, Barcelona and Marbella.
For investors planning pipeline, the implication is that secondary coastal destinations now warrant first-tier diligence. The midscale and lifestyle segments look best placed to capture diversified demand. Branded budget chains can absorb the international leisure flow that secondary airports are bringing in, while lifestyle and upper-midscale brands can serve the residential and longer-stay traveller mix that property data suggests is widening. Conversion of older independent stock, particularly in coastal towns with valid tourist licences in place, is another route into supply-constrained sub-markets.
Headwinds and what to watch
Two regulatory shifts will shape the picture into 2026. Spain abolished its Golden Visa scheme in April 2025, removing one channel of non-EU buyer activity, although the residential investment volume to date suggests the impact on coastal property demand has been limited.
More significant for the hotel sector is the tightening of short-term rental rules. Nationally, overnight stays in rented dwellings fell 9.3% in December 2025 even as hotel stays rose 7.3%, according to INE. The displacement effect is already visible. As communities vote on holiday-let restrictions and licensing tightens, the relative attractiveness of professionally operated hotel accommodation in secondary coastal markets is likely to strengthen further.
Spain’s hotel sector enters 2026 with broad-based demand, supportive connectivity and a regulatory environment that increasingly favours regulated accommodation over informal supply. The investment opportunity is no longer principally about the headline resorts. It is about the costas one step beyond them, where arrivals growth is fastest, capacity has further to run and the residential market is already pointing the way.
