For years, Spaniards and Britons have each made up around 40 per cent of guests in Benidorm’s hotels, with all other markets far behind. It all began with summer visitors from Alcoy and Madrid.
Market shares in the member hotels of the HOSBEC hotel association, in per cent, annual figures for 2023 and 2024. In 2025 the Britons were back ahead of the Spaniards at 42.5 per cent (38.6 per cent).
20232024
Sources: HOSBEC via Alicante Plaza, 2024 · HOSBEC via Alicante Plaza, 2025 · HOSBEC, 2026
Arrivals at all hotels in Benidorm, in thousands, by country of residence, Spain or abroad (INE); April, June, August and October calculated from cumulative figures.
Resident in SpainResident abroad
Sources: Turisme Comunitat Valenciana based on INE, July 2025 · Turisme Comunitat Valenciana based on INE, Sept 2025 · Turisme Comunitat Valenciana based on INE, Dec 2025
Arrivals at all hotels in Benidorm, in thousands, by country of residence (INE); 2019 and 2020 provisional figures, 2021 and 2022 not recorded.
Resident in SpainResident abroad
Sources: Turisme Comunitat Valenciana based on INE, 2018 · INE, 2019 · INE, 2020 · Turisme Comunitat Valenciana based on INE, 2023 · Turisme Comunitat Valenciana based on INE, 2024 · Turisme Comunitat Valenciana based on INE, 2025
June 1920
In June 1920 a German excursion group came to Benidorm and filled every guest bed in the village at a stroke: at the Fonda Casa de Baños, the Hostal La Plaza and the Hostal La Mayora. The episode is recorded in the book ‘Una presencia constante’ by the Grupo Orts-Puchades, published in 1984. It was, in a sense, Benidorm’s first overbooking.
Sources: Astrolabio (J. Díaz Ortuño), 2013
1930s to 1950s
Long before the first charter flights, Benidorm was a summer destination for families from Spain’s interior. As early as the 1930s, visitors came to the coast mainly from Alcoy and Madrid. Around 1950 the town counted just under 10,000 summer visitors; in 1954 there were 12,516, and a year later already around 15,000.
Sources: Astrolabio (J. Díaz Ortuño), 2012 · Astrolabio (J. Díaz Ortuño), 2012 · Astrolabio (J. Díaz Ortuño), 2012
1950s
Among the foreign visitors of the 1950s, Germans set the tone, according to the local history site Histobenidorm. Many of them initially drove down in their own cars. A letter from 1958 compared Benidorm with Torremolinos: there you met English, Americans, Swedes, French, Belgians and Dutch, whereas in Benidorm you met only Germans.
Many French visitors also came by car. The route maps in the hotel brochures therefore almost always showed the way from the French border, and most brochures were in four languages: Spanish, French, English and German.
Sources: Histobenidorm (F. Amillo Alegre), 2015 · Juan-José Chiner Vives (ed.), Los hoteles del paraíso 1954–1964, 2005
May 1959
In May 1959 the first organised package holiday reached Benidorm. The operator was a company of Swedish origin. The guests landed at Manises airport near Valencia and travelled on from there by coach to the Costa Blanca.
Mayor Pedro Zaragoza also courted visitors from the north: he had Benidorm advertised with sprigs of almond blossom in Stockholm department stores. In 1965, in ‘Operación Laponia’, the town invited a family from Lapland chosen by Finnair, as an advert aimed at Scandinavian holidaymakers.
Sources: Astrolabio (J. Díaz Ortuño), 2012 · Wikipedia EN – Pedro Zaragoza · Universidad de Alicante – Pedro Zaragoza
1959 to the 1960s
In 1959, in the same month as the Swedes, the first British package holidaymakers arrived too: with the airline BEA and the tour operator Wings, via Valencia. The flight took 3 hours 25 minutes, and the coach to Benidorm around three and a half hours more. From 1963, according to Histobenidorm, British tourism picked up markedly. At first the operators kept flying their guests to Manises.
Sources: Astrolabio (J. Díaz Ortuño), 2012 · Histobenidorm (F. Amillo Alegre), 2015
1962
In 1962 foreigners made up the majority of guests for the first time, with Germans the largest group. This was recorded by Vicente Sarrión in his dissertation at the University of Murcia, the first academic study of Benidorm. At the time the town had 32 hotels and 20 guesthouses with 2,710 beds between them, plus six travel agencies. Around 20,000 visitors came at Easter 1962, and in summer more than 50,000 people were staying in the town.
According to the municipal archive’s hotel catalogue, Britons were already playing a part in the early 1960s but were not in the majority. They came via the airports of Barcelona and Valencia.
Sources: Astrolabio (J. Díaz Ortuño), 2012 · Juan-José Chiner Vives (ed.), Los hoteles del paraíso 1954–1964, 2005
May 1964
On 2 May 1964 numerous couples married on the same day in the Basilica of Begoña in Bilbao, and on 5 May they arrived together in Benidorm. ‘Operación B-B’ (Benidorm–Bilbao) offered twelve days for 5,000 pesetas per couple. It was backed by the Caja de Ahorros Vizcaína, the newspaper ‘El Correo Español-El Pueblo Vasco’ and the town of Benidorm.
How many couples took part is unclear: 50, 60 or 150, depending on the source. In 1995 participants met again for the anniversary.
Sources: Astrolabio (J. Díaz Ortuño), 2014 · Juan-José Chiner Vives (ed.), Los hoteles del paraíso 1954–1964, 2005
1962–1965
From 1962 Finnair brought Finnish visitors to Benidorm via Barcelona and Valencia. In November 1964 Mayor Pedro Zaragoza travelled to Finland, and in April 1965 the management of the travel agency Matkatoimisto Kaleva Oy visited the town. In June 1965 came ‘Operación Laponia’ with a family from Lapland.
The aim of the campaign was a congress of Finnish travel agents, which met in Benidorm in October 1965. Charter flights via Valencia were announced for autumn 1965.
Sources: Astrolabio (J. Díaz Ortuño), 2013 · Astrolabio (J. Díaz Ortuño), 2013 · Universidad de Alicante – Pedro Zaragoza
1967
Alicante-El Altet airport went into service on 4 May 1967, designed for one million passengers. Gradually, charter flights now landed in the province itself instead of in Valencia; until the large aircraft arrived from March 1970, many operators continued to fly via Manises. According to the historian José Monge Juárez, British tour operators pre-financed a large share of the hotel building that followed. In 1965 Benidorm counted 66 accommodation establishments; in 1966 there were 31 hotels and 31 guesthouses.
No series of visitor numbers for Benidorm alone is known from these years. For the province of Alicante as a whole, however, official statistics exist: in 1968, 424,000 guests checked into hotels; by 1970 it was 586,000.
Sources: Monge Juárez, Historia Actual Online, 2024 · Histobenidorm (F. Amillo Alegre), 2015 · Pellejero Martínez, Universidad de Málaga, 2005 · Mª Nieves Higueras López, Benidorm, estudio de su modelo urbanístico (Proyecto Fin de Grado), 2012 · Juan-José Chiner Vives, Benidorm. Los orígenes de la ciudad vertical, 2006
1970–1973
From March 1970 charter flights with large aircraft landed at El Altet airport. Large hotel high-rises went up for their passengers, known at the time as ‘hotel factories’. For 1970 alone, the newspaper ‘Ciudad’ reported on 9 May 24 new hotels with 8,000 beds between them. The number of hotels rose from 33 in 1969 to 89 in 1972; the building boom peaked from 1971 to 1973.
Sources: Juan-José Chiner Vives, Benidorm. Los orígenes de la ciudad vertical, 2006 · Mª Nieves Higueras López, Benidorm, estudio de su modelo urbanístico (Proyecto Fin de Grado), 2012
1973 to 1976
For the mid-1970s there are figures for the stays sold to German guests: 17,000 in 1973, 16,000 in 1974, 13,000 in 1975 and only 8,000 in 1976. Across the province of Alicante, the number of hotel guests rose over the same period from 869,000 to 1.38 million.
There is one figure from the same period on where the winter visitors came from. In 1976 Mario Gaviria wrote that more than 60 per cent of tourists in Benidorm were English people who came in winter. He does not say in which year the count was made.
Sources: Histobenidorm based on Martínez Ibarra and ‘Ciudad’, 2015 · Pellejero Martínez, Universidad de Málaga, 2005 · Monge Juárez, Historia Actual Online, 2024
Autumn to spring
Benidorm is not just a summer destination. According to an analysis of INE data from 2014, around 80 per cent of hotel beds stay open all year round. In Calvià on Mallorca the figure is about 10 per cent.
In the off-season, many Spanish pensioners come with IMSERSO, the state holiday programme for older people. In 2019 the programme started later than usual; the HOSBEC hotel association put the cost at around 60,000 fewer overnight stays. In November 2021 the trips had not yet resumed; according to HOSBEC, that meant more than 6,000 fewer Spanish hotel guests a day.
Sources: Olcina Cantos, Baños and Rico, Revista de Geografía Norte Grande, 2016 · Alicante Plaza, 2019 · Alicante Plaza, 2021
1990 to 2014
In 1990 Benidorm had 30,937 hotel beds, more than half of them in one- or two-star establishments. In 1999 hotel occupancy averaged 94.4 per cent over the year. In 2012, 57 per cent of guests in hotels, apartments and campsites came from Spain and 43 per cent from abroad. Among the foreign guests, Britons made up 76 per cent.
In 2014 the HOSBEC hotel association reported 11.2 million hotel overnight stays: 5.35 million by Spaniards and over 4.6 million by Britons. Far behind came Belgians with over 461,000 and Dutch visitors with around 305,000 overnight stays.
Sources: Olcina Cantos, Baños and Rico, Revista de Geografía Norte Grande, 2016 · Soares, Ivars Baidal and Gândara, 2015 · Hosteltur, 2015
2025
In 2025 the Britons took the lead again in HOSBEC’s member hotels: they made up 42.5 per cent of guests, the Spaniards 38.6 per cent. In previous years Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and Ireland followed with 2 to 3 per cent each. According to official statistics, 58.3 per cent of all hotel guests lived abroad. They stayed 5.2 nights on average, guests from Spain 4.1.
An experimental INE analysis of mobile phone data counted 161,726 devices from foreign networks in Benidorm in June 2025. 130,079 of them came from the UK, around 80 per cent. Germany accounted for 1,685 devices, Sweden for 1,141. As early as 2024, Benidorm was the Spanish municipality with the most British visitors.
Sources: HOSBEC, 2026 · Turisme Comunitat Valenciana based on INE, 2025 · Alicante Plaza based on INE, 2025