The sector's performance has been very positive.
The Basque Government's Minister of Industry, Tourism and Trade, Ana Aguirre, assured that the tourism sector's data will surpass last year's historical records by the end of the year and noted that up to August the number of hotel arrivals grew by 5,7%.
However, Aguirre pointed out that the sector's major weakness is that, despite this increase in arrivals, it is unable to "retain" visitors, resulting in the number of hotel overnight stays in the first eight months growing by less than 4%.
Aguirre appeared at a press conference in Bilbao alongside the Deputy Minister of Tourism, Koro Garmendia, to announce the data for the sector throughout the past summer and the accumulated data up to August.
The councilor considered the sector's performance to be very positive: "Tourism in the Basque Country," she emphasized, "is also doing well."
Regarding the summer season, she emphasized that the sector's performance has been inconsistent, with a decrease in domestic tourists (-2%), offset by a significant increase in international tourists (+17%). According to the councilor, this trend is common throughout the Cantabrian coast.
The arrival of a greater number of visitors did not lead to an increase in overnight stays; on the contrary, the average stay in hotels was 1,98 days, 3% lower than that recorded in 2006.
As a result, the occupancy rate in summer was 57,51% in hotels and 42,97% in rural accommodations, representing relative decreases of 7% and 13%, respectively.
However, as Aguirre pointed out, this situation has been accompanied by an increase in the supply of places in both hotels and rural accommodations, which constitutes an "indicator of investment and business confidence" that reveals that "the private sector has good business expectations and is committed to investing in the Basque Country."
In the cumulative figures up to August, the behavior has been irregular by territory, by segment and by month, so "isolating factors that are very sensitive for tourism such as the continued bad weather, the political situation (breaking of the ETA truce) or the rise of the euribor to try to relate them directly to the tourist flows in detail, is always very difficult and not very rigorous," Aguirre pointed out.
Aguirre expressed confidence that the long weekends and holidays in the coming months would allow for an improvement on the results of 2006, the best year in the history of Basque tourism.
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