Spain hosted nearly 75 million foreign tourists last year, ten percent more than visited the world's third most popular destination in 2015, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation said Monday. "More than 74, probably 75 million international travellers have come to Spain" in 2016, the Madrid-based body's secretary general, Taleb Rifai, told a news conference.
The UN body will release on January 17 its global tourism figures for 2016. It predicts international tourism grew by 4.0 percent last year. Rifai would not say if the surge in visitors to Spain had changed the country's ranking among the world's most visited destinations last year. Spain welcomed just over 68 million visitors in 2015, making it the world's third most visited nation after France and the United States.
Spanish tourism executives credit security fears in competing sunshine destinations across the Mediterranean and in the Middle East for the rise in visitors to Spain's shores but Rifai rejected this theory. "Spain did well because Spain is doing the right thing" in terms of how it promotes itself as a destination and welcomes visitors, he said. Each visitor to Spain spent an average of 800 euros ($842) during their stay, a figure that is comparable to the global average, said Rifai. They spent a total of over 60 billion euros in the country in 2016, he added.
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