In terms of destination type, if we segment Spanish municipalities between urban (with more than 30,000 inhabitants) and rural, and between coastal and non-coastal, we observe that US tourism plays a particularly important role in non-coastal urban municipalities (14.7%). In rural municipalities – both coastal and non-coastal – US tourism accounts for just over 4% of total expenditure. The evolution of US tourism spending also varies, with the destinations where this nationality plays a greater role showing a somewhat better performance. Thus, among rural destinations, where US tourism represents a smaller proportion of the total, the year-on-year declines in US tourism spending between November 2024 and April 2025 are around 10%. In urban coastal destinations, however, the decline is more modest (–5.4%), and in non-coastal urban destinations, where US tourism plays a bigger role, the spending has registered a very slight increase (+0.1%).
Although the slowdown is slightly less pronounced in destinations where US tourism plays a more prominent role, it is important that they develop a strategy to offset this slowdown, for instance by promoting high-value-added tourism, including from other long-haul source markets. In recent years, some long-haul source markets have shown very solid performance, including the Middle East, Latin America and Australia. In contrast, Asian long-haul tourism has recovered more modestly. In fact, spending by tourists from China and Japan recorded on CaixaBank POS terminals has not yet recovered to 2019 levels, even in nominal terms. Promoting the recovery of markets that are lagging behind, as well as continuing to focus on long-haul source markets that are showing strength, could prove key to mitigating the impact of the slowdown in US tourism on the sector.